Recent layoffs at two Wingspan Portfolio Advisors call centers come just weeks after several employees, including at least one senior vice president, were laid off at the special servicer's Dallas headquarters. But despite mounting rumors of Steve Horne being removed from his position as CEO, a spokesperson said Thursday the company's founder is still leading the firm.
The company in mid-September laid off as many as 15 Dallas-based employees, including Steve Shiller, its senior vice president of strategic alliances and the third employee hired after Wingspan's founding in 2008.
The spokesman said Thursday that Wingspan expects to sign new re-employment contracts for the call center employees in Melbourne, Fla., and Monroe, La.
"It is in the nature of our work with large financial institutions to wrap up specific contracts for services and to have brief periods of time before new contracts begin," the company said, in response to inquiries about the call center employees.
Wingspan issued a statement saying it was "committed to its presence" in both areas relative to mortgage, banking, customer service and default servicing work.
The special servicing business, which focuses on distressed home loan product, has been under pressure as competition has heated up both among players in the space as well as among investors interested in profiting from distressed product that serve as their clients. While there is a fair amount of distressed inventory remaining from the 2007-2008 downturn, it has been diminishing over time.
Also, home prices in many areas have continued to rise in some cases the rate of increase has slowed, and the discount prices for distressed loans have diminished as competition has increased. This erodes the profit available trades of many assets, and makes investors less willing to pay the higher servicing fees special servicers require to handle distressed assets, according to one industry source.
Former Wingspan executive vice president E.J. Kite left the company in August, though the departure was unrelated to the recent layoffs.
