Bank of America to buy Countrywide
Bank of America Corp. said Friday it has agreed to buy Countrywide Financial for $4 billion in stock, a deal that both rescues the country’s biggest mortgage lender and expands the financial services empire of the nation’s largest consumer bank.
The acquisition will make Charlotte-based Bank of America the nation’s biggest mortgage lender and loan servicer.
“Countrywide presents a rare opportunity for Bank of America to add what we believe is the best domestic mortgage platform at an attractive price and to affirm our position as the nation’s premier lender to consumers,” Bank of America chief executive Ken Lewis said in a statement.
Christmas Holiday Slows Mortgage Business
The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the Christmas holiday shortened week ending December 28, 2007. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, was 533.9, a decrease of 11.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 603.8 one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 47.2 percent compared with the previous week and was down 20 percent compared with the same week one year earlier.