WMC Mortgage Corporation, also known as WMC or WMC Direct, was a

Woodland Hills, California Woodland Hills is a neighborhood bordering the Santa Monica Mountains in the San Fernando Valley region of Los Angeles, California. Geography Woodland Hills is in the southwestern region of the San Fernando Valley, which is located east of Ca ...

based wholesale originator of

subprime In finance, subprime lending (also referred to as near-prime, subpar, non-prime, and second-chance lending) is the provision of loans to people in the United States who may have difficulty maintaining the repayment schedule. Historically, subp ...

residential

mortgage A mortgage loan or simply mortgage (), in civil law jurisdicions known also as a hypothec loan, is a loan used either by purchasers of real property to raise funds to buy real estate, or by existing property owners to raise funds for any ...

s. The company was founded in 1955 as Pacific Western Mortgage Company. It went through several mergers and became known as Weyerhaeuser Mortgage Company (owned by

Weyerhaeuser Weyerhaeuser () is an American timberland company which owns nearly of timberlands in the U.S., and manages an additional of timberlands under long-term licenses in Canada. The company also manufactures wood products. It operates as a real e ...

). In the late 1990s it was sold to

private equity firm A private equity firm is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of startup or operating companies through a variety of loosely affiliated investment strategies including lev ...

Apollo Global Management Apollo Global Management, Inc. is an American global private-equity firm. It provides investment management and invests in credit, private equity, and real assets. As of March 31, 2022, the company had $512 billion of assets under management, ...

, and entered the subprime mortgage lending business.

GE Money GE Capital is the financial services division of General Electric. The company currently only runs one division, GE Energy Financial Services. It had provided additional services in the past; however, those units were sold between 2013 and 2018 ...

(formerly GE Consumer Finance), owned by

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable ene ...

, bought WMC Mortgage in 2004 for about $500 million. WMC Mortgage catered to consumers with less than perfect borrower profiles. The company was among the largest subprime lenders in the United States, ranking seventh in 2005 and fifth in 2006 in the dollar volume of subprime mortgage originations. The original domain for WMC Mortgage was www.wmcmortgage.com GE ceased WMC's operations in late 2007 due to the subprime market collapse. GE's WMC Mortgage unit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/23/reuters-america-ges-wmc-mortgage-unit-felled-by-financial-crisis-files-chapter-11-bankruptcy.html

References

External links

* News report by Michael Hudson, iWatch News
Fraud and Folly: The Untold Story of General Electric’s Subprime Debacle (Friday 13 January 2012)
Mortgage lenders of the United States Subprime mortgage lenders Subprime mortgage crisis {{US-finance-company-stub