Subject: Oooops. Countrywide Puts an End To Ski Junket
Business/Financial Desk; SECTC Countrywide Puts an End To Ski Junket 25 February 2008 The New York Times The weather forecast may call for snow and good skiing conditions in Avon, Colo., on Monday. But no one at the luxury resort, near Aspen, will be hitting the slopes -- or eating $105 Kobe steaks -- on Countrywide's dime this week. Countrywide Financial, the besieged mortgage lender, has canceled a gathering of bankers from smaller mortgage banks at the Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch ski resort (where room rates begin at $725), Countrywide said in a statement on Sunday. The company was to pay for 30 invited guests' hotel rooms, meals, skiing and tips. In the statement, the company said that ''in light of recent events'' it had decided to cancel all gatherings with business partners and clients for the rest of the year, moving quickly after being criticized for planning such an extravagant event. The three-night gathering, which was to include business meetings as well as skiing, drinking and sampling expensive meals like $140 caviar and Kurobuta pork osso bucco at the Spago restaurant, had already drawn negative press. ''Let 'Em Eat Kobe Steak,'' a headline in The New York Post sneered on Saturday. Countrywide has held the gathering every year for its correspondent lenders, which make the loans and sell them to the company. And companies treating business partners to high-priced junkets is nothing new in the corporate world. But this year's event coincides with a continued crisis in the mortgage markets. Default rates are skyrocketing. Countrywide, the nation's largest mortgage company, has foreclosed on about 90,000 loans so far. Banks have called for intervention from the federal government to prevent a wider housing crisis. Moreover, Countrywide agreed last month to sell itself to Bank of America for $4.1 billion, a fraction of its former market value. It has reported a $422 million loss for its fourth quarter, after setting aside $924 million for credit losses and taking an $831 million impairment charge related to home equity lines of credit. It has also laid off more than 11,000 employees since last July.
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