Angelo Mozilo - Life and Career

Life and Career

Mozilo was born in New York City, the son of a Bronx butcher. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Fordham University in 1960.

In 1969, he and his former mentor David S. Loeb, who had already started a mortgage lending company, founded Countrywide Credit Industries in New York. They later moved the headquarters to Pasadena, California and then to Calabasas, California in Los Angeles County. Mozilo and Loeb also cofounded IndyMac Bank, which was originally founded as Countrywide Mortgage Investment, before being spun off as an independent bank in 1997. IndyMac collapsed and was seized by federal regulators on July 11, 2008.

Since Countrywide was listed on the NYSE in 1984, Mozilo sold $406 million worth of its stock, mostly obtained through stock option grants. $129 million of this was realized in the 12 months ending August 2007.

In the beginning, Countrywide was a pioneer in the nation-wide non-bank mortgage industry. Mozilo was very concerned with the quality of credit borrowers and the quality of their loans. When subprime loans came onto the scene in the late 1980s (Guardian S&L) and 1990s (The Money Store), his company did not participate. He privately described the subprime loan mavericks of the 1990s as 'crooks'. However, his company began to lose business to the subprime lenders. He had to compete with them or keep losing market share. Thus, by the early 2000s (decade), Countrywide began using subprime loans.

Perhaps more than any single individual, Mozilo has come to symbolize, and bear the blame for, the subprime mortgage crisis. In a New York Times feature on October 20, 2008, Henry G. Cisneros, former secretary of HUD and member of the Countrywide board of directors, describes Mr. Mozilo as “sick with stress — the final chapter of his life is the infamy that’s been brought on him, or that he brought on himself.” CNN named Mozilo as one of the "Ten Most Wanted: Culprits" of the 2008 financial collapse in the United States.