Countrywide co-founder Angelo Mozilo dies at 84

Angelo Mozilo, one of the mortgage industry's biggest supporters for advancing low and moderate income homeownership – but would become the face of its biggest catastrophe – died on Sunday.

The news was first reported in Rob Chrisman's daily newsletter and confirmed by his son Mark. Mozilo was 84.

Mozilo co-founded what would become Countrywide Financial Corp. in 1969 with David Loeb, eventually turning the nonbank into the industry's largest originator and servicer. Later, the pair would found what became known as IndyMac, which met its own fate in 2008 after becoming a bank. At that time, Mozilo was no longer involved in its affairs.

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Mozilo was known in the industry for both his perpetual tan as well as his sense of style. Starting in October 1991 and over the following 12 months, Mozilo was the face of the business as president (a position that has since been renamed chairman) of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Under Mozilo's stewardship, Countrywide emphasized working with low- and moderate- income communities. In 1999, Mozilo increased Countrywide's five-year commitment, the We House America campaign to serve these borrowers, to $80 billion.

A 2003 article noted that Countrywide grew the commitment to $100 billion and achieved it three years early. It then increased the goal to $600 billion, to achieve by 2010.

Countrywide would not survive to that target date.

At the start of 2008, weighed down by poorly originated loans, which some said were reportedly done at the direction of Mozilo, Bank of America agreed to buy what it already didn't own of Countrywide for $4 billion. By then, Countrywide had moved from being an independent mortgage banker to owning a thrift.

Mozilo never faced criminal charges for what happened at Countrywide but did agree, without admitting or denying liability, to a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $67.5 million.

What particularly aroused ire in some quarters was the so-called "Friends of Angelo" program. Reportedly some 18,000 of these loans were made over a 12-year period that included a 50-basis-point price break along with fee waivers.

Mozilo spent the succeeding years pushing back on the perception he and Countrywide, along with subprime lending, bore responsibility for the Financial Crisis.

In a 2019 Bloomberg Television interview, he said the blame for the turmoil was with everyone from banks to politicians and bond-rating companies.

"Let them believe what they want to believe," he said. "I never saw it coming. Never."