| CNBC has reported that Countrywide Credit Industries has hired Goldman Sachs to line up potential buyers for the nation’s largest publicly traded mortgage lender.
Countrywide declined to comment on the CNBC report, but CEO Angelo Mozilo, 61, who co-founded Countrywide 31 years ago, said in May that staying independent was no longer a sacred tenet, raising buyout speculation.
“It’s an attractive company from a consolidation standpoint,” said Thomas O’Donnell, an analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, who values the company at $45 to $50 a share.
At the current stock price the company’s market capitalization is about $4 billion. The stock price has tumbled from more than $55 a share in 1998 as interest rates have risen, finally slowing the housing market this year. |
