Ocwen to Buy Saxon for $59.3 Million

""Morgan Stanley"":http://www.morganstanley.com has announced the sale of ""Saxon Mortgage Services"":http://www.saxononline.com to ""Ocwen Financial Corporation"":http://www.ocwen.com.

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Ocwen has agreed to acquire Saxon for the base purchase price of $59.3 million. The deal also includes an estimated $1.4 billion for servicing advance receivables outstanding.

The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of 2012. According to _Reuters_, Morgan Stanley bought Saxon in August 2006 for $706 million.

This will mark Georgia-based Ocwen’s second major acquisition of a residential mortgage servicer in less than a year’s time. In both cases, Ocwen took the servicing businesses off the hands of investment banks.

In June, ""Ocwen agreed to purchase"":http://dsnews.comarticles/goldman-sachs-sells-litton-servicing-arm-to-ocwen-2011-06-06 Litton Loan Servicing from Goldman Sachs.

""Ocwen completed an earlier acquisition"":http://dsnews.comarticles/ocwen-completes-homeq-acquisition-closes-two-facilities-2010-09-07 of HomEq Servicing, the U.S. mortgage servicing business of Barclays Bank, in September of 2010.