Capital Markets Cooperative Announces a Strategic Investment by WL Ross & Co. LLC

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla., Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- The Capital Markets Cooperative ("CMC") has announced a strategic partnership with WL Ross & Co. LLC ("WL Ross"), a leading private equity investment firm founded in 2000 and led by Wilbur L. Ross.  Private equity funds affiliated with WL Ross agreed to make a strategic investment in CMC, and WL Ross intends to invest significant additional capital going forward.

CMC is an expert mortgage capital markets firm.  Its national client base of banks and mortgage companies originates over $25 billion in mortgages annually. CMC helps its clients profit by increasing the revenues and reducing the risks and costs associated with mortgage origination.  The CMC trading desk and cooperative services operations facilitate the sale of mortgages to the secondary mortgage market.  WL Ross is the majority owner of American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc. ("AHMSI"), which services over $85 billion of mostly nonprime mortgages, and a minority investor in several domestic banks.

CMC will deploy the WL Ross investment to expand its platform and to produce enhanced liquidity, execution and flexibility for CMC's members and investors.  The collective effort of the CMC client base will continue to create extraordinary opportunities for its members that are often unattainable individually, effectively "changing the rules."

"The superior mortgage origination quality of the CMC client base and the significant resources and market expertise of WL Ross create a winning combination that will be tough to beat," explained Tom Millon, CEO, President, and founder of CMC.  "We are excited to expand our firm and drive additional value to our member-clients with such a capable partner as WL Ross."

"We have been very impressed by Tom Millon, his CMC team, and their strong network of partner financial institutions," stated Wilbur Ross, Chairman & CEO of WL Ross.  "We look forward to working with CMC to expand the services that they can provide its partner institutions."

Mark Gorman and Lindi Sabloff from Hidden River Capital acted as exclusive financial advisor to CMC on this transaction.  

About Capital Markets Cooperative

Capital Markets Cooperative ("CMC") provides mortgage bankers with the economies of scale and the expertise that reduce risk and maximize profit in the secondary market.  Regarded as the premiere secondary marketing specialists in the industry, CMC has worked with financial institutions nationwide to break traditional barriers in capital markets and take performance to the next level of profitability.  CMC's participating financial institutions originate over $25 billion of mortgages annually.  To date CMC executives have managed more than $500 billion of mortgage volume.  

About WL Ross & Co. LLC

WL Ross & Co. LLC ("WL Ross") is a leading private equity firm with $9.7 billion of assets under management. The firm has significant investments in financial services in the United States and internationally. These investments include a leading non-prime mortgage servicer (American Home Mortgage Servicing, Inc.), a AAA-rated financial guaranty company, minority investments in several U.S. banks and a leading credit card company in the United Kingdom. WL Ross was chosen with its parent, Invesco Ltd., by the U.S. Department of the Treasury to be one of the Private Public Investment Program managers.

SOURCE Capital Markets Cooperative and WL Ross & Co.