Ocwen Completes HomEq Acquisition, Closes Two Facilities

""Ocwen Financial Services"":http://www.ocwen.com closed its purchase of ""HomEq Servicing"":http://www.homeq.com last week. The impending deal with HomEq parent ""Barclays Bank"":http://www.barclays.co.uk was initially ""announced in May"":http://dsnews.comarticles/ocwen-buys-homeq-servicing-for-13-billion-2010-05-28.
[IMAGE] The transaction aligns two of the foremost names in the business of servicing distressed mortgages. Ocwen paid Barclays $1.3 billion in cash for the HomEq subsidiary.

HomEq services approximately $28 billion in home loans, with just over 1,100 employees working out of two corporate facilities â€" one in North Highlands, a suburb of Sacramento, California, and one in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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Ocwen says it will close both HomEq offices and lay off the HomEq staff. The company has already filed Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications, (WARNs) with each state, outlining its intention to let go the 242 employees at the Raleigh office by October 31, and lay off 900-plus workers in North Highlands before the end of November.

More than three-fourths of the workforce for Florida-based Ocwen is currently housed outside the United States.

Ocwen President Ronald Faris said in a statement, ""The transfer of the HomEq portfolio also means that we will, unfortunately, need to consolidate the HomEq operations into ours, a process that will occur gradually over the coming months.""

Faris added, ""We regret the loss of HomEq jobs and are grateful to those employees for their service and commitment to that firm, but we are heartened that the addition of HomEq customers to the Ocwen platform will enable us to provide real, home-saving solutions to more distressed homeowners and step up our role in efforts to solve the mortgage crisis.""