Countrywide lays off employees in its Alt-A department
-->Uncategorized August 20th, 2007
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Countrywide Financial Corp., reducing costs as part of its effort to weather a credit crunch, has begun laying off employees involved in originating loans, according to an internal email.
The layoffs occurred in the company’s Full Spectrum Lending unit, which handles many home mortgages in a category known as Alt-A, or mortgages between prime and subprime that often involve borrowers who don’t document their income. Such borrowers typically don’t qualify for a conforming mortgage, the type that can be sold to government-sponsored mortgage investors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The email, sent to employees Friday by a senior official of Full Spectrum, discussed layoffs made that day but didn’t specify the number. The company as a whole employs about 61,000 people. It had a sales force of about 6,800 in Full Spectrum out of a total loan-origination sales force of about 18,000 as of June 30, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
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