Washington Mutual to Sell $140 Billion Mortgage Servicing Operation to Wells Fargo

Washington Mutual, Inc. and Wells Fargo & Company have entered into a definitive agreement to sell Washington Mutual’s entire portfolio of government mortgage servicing and a portion of its conforming, fixed-rate servicing portfolio — totaling approximately $140 billion and representing approximately 1.3 million servicing customers — to Wells Fargo. As part of the transaction, Washington Mutual will transfer to Wells Fargo its Milwaukee servicing operations. The effective date of the sale is expected to be July 31, 2006. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

To help ensure a smooth transition for customers, the two companies agreed to transfer to Wells Fargo the majority of Washington Mutual’s loan servicing and support staff at its Milwaukee operations with the transfer of servicing. The loan servicing and support employees who will join Wells Fargo are expected to transfer to Wells Fargo from the fourth quarter of 2006 through the first quarter of 2007.

“The sale is consistent with Washington Mutual’s strategy to deploy capital for maximum return and to focus our Home Loans business on higher margin products, while improving operating efficiency and reducing Mortgage Servicing Rights as a percentage of capital. The sale will also appropriately balance our servicing portfolio with our origination franchise,” said Steve Rotella, Washington Mutual’s president and chief operating officer.

“We’re also very pleased that including the Milwaukee support operations in this transaction will provide continued employment for the majority of our employees who have contributed to our servicing success,” said David Schneider, president of Washington Mutual’s Home Loans Group. “Rather than shifting our product mix over time, selling this portion of our loan servicing portfolio, which is predominately mortgage-only customers, allows us to execute on our Home Loans product strategy faster while ensuring a seamless transition. Our total servicing portfolio will include approximately 4 million customers with outstanding principal balance of $692 billion at the completion of this sale.”

“We welcome these 1.3 million mortgage servicing customers to Wells Fargo and the valued team members who will join us to serve them,” said Mark Oman, senior EVP of Wells Fargo & Company and head of the Home and Consumer Finance Group. “This acquisition will further leverage the operating scale of our servicing business. Consistent with our vision to satisfy all our customers’ financial needs, we look forward to building relationships with these customers so we can be there when they need their next financial product. We have a proven track record of earning more business from new customers. After this purchase, our total servicing portfolio will grow to 7.5 million customers with outstanding principal balances of approximately $1.25 trillion, served by team members from seven locations across the country.”

“We expect this transaction to exceed our required internal rate of return even before factoring in any cross-sell to these new customers,” said Howard Atkins, Wells Fargo & Company’s chief financial officer. “With this additional servicing we’ll continue to have a good balance between originations and servicing in our mortgage business and a healthy diversity of revenue sources, including our mortgage business, for our company as a whole.”

Wells Fargo grew its mortgage servicing portfolio at a compound annual growth rate of 25 percent since 1995. By comparison, this acquisition will increase Wells Fargo’s mortgage servicing portfolio by 13 percent.