TYB
Where did Peter T. Paul get his money?
The man whose name adorns the UNH business school is a financier who helped create securitized low-doc loans
May 16, 2014 Bob Sanders
Financier Peter T. Paul, the man for whom the University of New Hampshire’s business school is named, says he was smack in the middle of the 2008 financial meltdown, but that doesn’t mean he caused it.
“I was a mortgage banker, but I didn’t bring down the financial system of the free world,” he told NHBR in a phone interview from his office in San Francisco…
…Added Arnesen: “Paul helped push us to the financial edge.”
But did he?
• Paul did pioneer the securitization of “Alt-A” loans – loans granted to those with little proof of income – at Headlands Mortgage Co., a company he founded and later sold for $473 million to GreenPoint Financial Corp. in New York City.
He left GreenPoint – identified as one of the larger subprime lenders in the country – long before it became the target of several lawsuits that claim most of its loans were no good. GreenPoint and its successor, Capital One, now are dealing with a subpoena from federal and state authorities investigating mortgage fraud.
• After selling GreenPoint, Paul started Paul Financial, which flourished and later failed, resulting in large losses for himself and his borrowers. And it became the target of a class-action truth-in-lending suit that was settled last November for $1.75 million.
• Paul then returned to the mortgage business, this time as a buyer of some of the same mortgages that he once sold, once they began to perform again…
…Largest subprime lender
By 1997, Headlands ranked as the second-largest wholesale mortgage originator in the U.S. that was not publicly owned or affiliated with a public company, according to National Mortgage News. When it went public in February 1998, in a $96 million initial public offering that actually raised $110 million, it had 1,000 employees. And by the end of the year, when GreenPoint Financial agreed to acquire it for $473 million, it was originating $6.8 billion in loans, more than double the 1996 amount.
GreenPoint – an established savings-and-loan in Brooklyn – was also getting into the aggressive lending business in 1995 when it acquired Barclays American Mortgage Corp., so when the Headlands deal closed in March 1999, it became an alternative loan originator powerhouse.
Between 1997 and 2001, GreenPoint was the largest subprime lender, according to “Anti-Predatory Lender Legislation: A Multi State Survey of Impacts,” by Tonya Diane Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Headlands was 25th.
But Paul disagrees with those rankings and their characterization of GreenPoint and Headlands. There were other lenders that did more and, he said emphatically, “We did not make subprime loans.”
He said the loans went to people who could pay them back, and – at least during his tenure at GreenPoint – they had a very low default rate. Indeed, there was very little litigation over the loans originated at Headlands or while Paul was at GreenPoint. That could have been because the borrowers were more creditworthy, or because few defaulted during a time of rising property values.
“No one complained when the elevator was going up,” observed Paul.
Moar at:
https://www.nhbr.com/where-did-peter-t-paul-get-his-money/
He lands at KAPC Napa, California in about one hour.Down from Sandpoint, Idaho.
Tail number N107PT.
PAPA TANGO LLC
https://www.corporationwiki.com/California/Corte-Madera/papa-tango-llc/46248354.aspx
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N107PT