Mozilo misses out on award

MarketWatch's Herb Greenberg has picked Sears Holdings Chairman Eddie Lampert as the winner of his "Worst CEO of the Year" award, even though Countrywide Financial Corp.'s Angelo Mozilo was "the most obvious choice" to many of his readers, he says.

Mozilo has only become the poster child for the mortgage crisis because Countrywide is so darn big, Greenberg says, suggesting CEOs at other lenders -- such as Kerry Killinger of Washington Mutual, Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns or NovaStar's Scott Hartman -- were equally worthy candidates. Citigroup's former CEO, Chuck Prince, was in the race until he was fired, Greenberg says.

Other than "ill-timed stock sales as his company was buying back stock" and "Countrywide's aggressive push into subprime loans at the wrong time" it's hard to single out Mozilo, Greenberg maintains.   

Countrywide, which undoubtedly had many a business writer busy this summer writing up a lengthy obituary in preperation for the company's demise, was also forgiven by investors today. As the Bush administration and loan servicers rolled out a plan to refinance or freeze rates on up to 1.2 million subprime ARM loans to avert foreclosures, Countrywide's stock shot up 16.1 percent on the day, to $12.10. That's 47 percent above its 52-week low of $8.21 on Nov. 20.

Heck, the stock's almost back to where it would be worth it for Bank of America to exercise its right to convert that $2 billion loan it made to Countrywide  in August into stock in the company for the agreed upon price of $18 a share. It was about $22 at the time, down from a (now) 52-week high of $45.26.

All rights reserved. This content may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this content without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.