The End Of The Countrywide/Mozilo Story: "A Total Disaster ... His Ego Sank Him ... He Had To Be First In Everything"

The Los Angeles Times reports:

• Angelo R. Mozilo struggled last week to bid farewell to No. 1 home lender Countrywide Financial Corp., the company he led for 39 years only to see it toppled by misadventures in high-risk mortgages. The usually silk-smooth Mozilo garbled words and at one point knocked over his microphone at a special shareholder meeting. Looking grim and sounding resigned, he said the era of independent home lenders like Calabasas-based Countrywide was at an end. Still, he added, "Countrywide is a great American story."

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• "He was an admired and feared competitor," said Paul Muolo, an editor at industry newsletter National Mortgage News and co-author of a book on the lending debacle, "Chain of Blame," that is due out this month. "But now his reputation is trashed." [...] The end of the Countrywide story was "a total disaster," Muolo said. "His ego sank him. . . . He had to be first in everything."

For more, see Countrywide's Mozilo exits stage a fallen hero (The mortgage loan empire he created flies a new flag Tuesday as the lender is absorbed by Bank of America).

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