The day has come.
Ameriquest Mortgage, once one of the largest subprime lenders in the country, will be shut down, the company said today.
The retail company stopped accepting loan applications on Aug. 1, said spokesman Chris Orlando.
Citigroup Inc. said it’s buying the wholesale operation, known as Argent Mortgage, and the loan servicing unit of ACC Capital Holdings in Orange. The deal closes tomorrow.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed, except to say the servicing portfolio totals $45 billion of loans.
The deal comes as most investors are shunning all but the safest mortgages.
Danielle Romero-Apsilos, a spokeswoman for Citigroup, said Argent is still making a small amount of loans.
“We will restart the origination business slowly and it will be under new management and we will have a new brand,” she said.
Citigroup plans to keep the Orange office as well as three other operation centers that will report to New York, she said.
The company is picking up about 2,000 employees nationwide from ACC and plans to keep most of them, she said.
[...] The OC Register’s Mortgage Insider now has a post on this, which provides some details about Citigroup’s plans for Argent: Danielle Romero-Apsilos, a [...]
[...] from the OC Register on Citi’s plans for employees here in town: Danielle Romero-Apsilos, a spokeswoman for Citigroup, said Argent is [...]
Thanks Matt
big suprises from big banks.
Bye thieves.
The Ameriquest down fall started with the hiring of Aseem Mital
It’s about these crooks get put out to pasture as a former you don’t know how much we went through to make these questionable loans “perform” Predatory lending, ARM’s written to people on fixed income that couldn;t afford them, I am not surprised-Good Riddance-And most of all by Roland Arnall!
Good luck Citi. You say you’re going to keep most employess well my advise, keep only the good ones. You should and hopefully will remove all of those in senior, upper-level decision making positions. They are the ones who created the mess. Adios crooks. I hope you sit in front of Congress some day and have to answer to the mess you and the rest of sub-prime has made of the economy in this country. I hope you have to give back the fortunes you made while riding on the coat tails of those you destroyed. Poor ACC? HUH! I laugh at your demise. Don’t go crying looking for a bail out now.