NYCB Will Sell $5B Mortgage Warehouse Loan Portfolio To JPMorgan
New York Community Bancorp is selling about $5B in mortgage warehouse loans to JPMorgan Chase as it looks to get back on firmer footing, CNBC reports.
Warehouse loans are lines of credit given to lenders who can use that money to give out mortgages. If the lender sells the loans to an investor, they get repaid. These loans accounted for $5.2B of NYCB's total $82.3B as of March 31, CNBC reports.
The move is part of the bank's plan to improve capital, liquidity and loan-to-deposit metrics, NYCB CEO Joseph Otting said in a statement.
With the sale, NYCB's loan-to-deposit ratio is expected to decrease from 110% by the end of Q1 to 104%. NYCB's ability to pay off short-term obligations will go up as cash and securities rise to 24% of its total assets, up from 20% on March 31.
The announcement boosted the bank's shares by 3%. Its stock is down more than 62% this year.
It's been a bumpy road for NYCB this year. It all started in January when, during a Q4 earnings call, the bank revealed $252M in losses from troubled commercial real estate loans.
The bank also announced plans to slash its dividend by 70%, with the intent of boosting capital and reserves to cover multifamily and office loan distress. At the time, $4B of its debt was tied up in these loans. Its stock took a 50% nosedive, reaching a 23-year low of $5.70. The bank's shares lost a third of their value.
In February, Moody's cut the bank's credit to junk status as its stocks closed down 60% from the previous week. That same month, it named Alessandro DiNello as president and chief executive officer after less than three weeks in the executive chairman position.
The next month, Otting, the former comptroller of the currency, replaced DiNello as CEO and the bank announced a plan to raise more than $1B in equity. Liberty Strategic Capital led the way with a $400M investment, Hudson Bay joined the fray with $250M and Reverence Capital Partners chipped in $200M.
In similar news, Morgan Stanley is buying $700M in property loans made by Signature Bank, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
The seller is a group including Blackstone, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Rialto Capital that had purchased a stake in $17B worth of loans from the failed bank late last year. It put about $1.8B of that up for sale in January. There is no word on whether the remaining roughly $1.1B of that is still on the market, Bloomberg said.
