Pacific Mortgage Investment Blog

For the full story, click on this LA Times link:   http://www.latimes.com/classified/realestate/news/la-fi-bofa10-2008jul10,0,450812.story

Bank of America Chief Executive Ken Lewis defended his takeover of Countrywide Financial Corp., saying Wednesday that the Calabasas lender "kind of went into a shell and didn't say much about what they were doing right" when the mortgage business hit the skids last year.

Often cast as having epitomized the lax lending standards that buried millions of Americans in unaffordable loans, Countrywide, the nation's largest mortgage lender, was on the ropes when Bank of America agreed to buy it six months ago.

But in an interview with Los Angeles Times reporters and editors, Lewis said Countrywide had been painted with too broad a brush, and he promised to do a better job of defending it than its co-founder and chief executive, Angelo R. Mozilo, had done.

"There's always another side to any story, and we're going to tell it," Lewis said, praising Countrywide's efforts to avert foreclosures, which he credited for helping almost 100,000 borrowers remain in their homes this year.

"We don't think in every instance that Countrywide was the bad guy," Lewis said.