CNBC Press Releases

BARTIROMO: Angelo, you're the largest shareholder, but you've been selling stock.

Mr. MOZILO: Right.

BARTIROMO: I've got to ask you about this. What's the lowest price you've sold at?

Mr. MOZILO: Whatever the--well, the lowest price was 28 because built into the--into my 10b5-1 is a can't sell below $28 a share. There is a tagline at the end of it that if some stuff's left over, it has to sold in a certain number of days. However, this is under a 10b5-1 because--I'm glad you asked me that. This is a constant thing, why am I selling? The reason I'm selling is that it is the majority of my net worth, and I have a big family, nine grandchildren, five children, I have a lot of education to pay for, but--so I have a lot of obligations, but I am sort of at the end of my career, not at the beginning of my career. And I have to plan as to what the future's going to be, and since I own such an enormous number of shares, there's a point at which when do I do this? And so I try to do it in an orderly way. So I did it under the 10b5-1s were put into effect where I don't have control over it. They make the--we draw the contract, whatever the price is, it sells on a day that I don't even know. It's just--and that's what's done, out of my hands, never have any contact with anybody. That was the best say that I thought I could sell without people thinking I know something, I'm doing something, because I only--I can only set them up when I know nothing. And so it just keeps on going along. That to me is the best interest to me and the shareholders. And I believe this stock is going to continue to rise, but under the contract, that's what they had to be sold at was a minimum of $28 a share in the stock, so you've seen those sales lately. And so I have to have an orderly dissolution of them, going to be gone from the company at some point. My contract goes up to 2009. I don't want to be dumping 11--you know, whatever the shares I have to eliminate, shares at in--at once.

BARTIROMO: Right.

Mr. MOZILO: That's not fair to the shareholders. So I've got to do it in an orderly way.

BARTIROMO: Sure. So what is the future, then, for Countrywide? Tell me how you see this debacle playing out?

Mr. MOZILO: Well, I think it's great. First of all, it's made us stronger. It's made us stronger. It's made us, you know, the things we're looking at, we never thought we'd have to look at before because we had--we had access to commercial paper at will, repo lines at will, medium term notes at will. So our financing was never an issue here at Countrywide. It's made us a much stronger company. We have control of all of our data today that we didn't--and I say it was not as expert as it is today. Countrywide's future is going to be great. You know, it's always been great. We've been, you know, we're one of the best performing share stocks and stocks in the New York Stock Exchange for the last 40 years. You know, better than Berkshire Hathaway, and I love Warren, but that it makes me proud to have, you know, people that we beat. Microsoft. We're better than Dell. We're better than all of those to our shareholders. We want to continue doing that. That's who we work for. So I think down the line this is going to be a better company, a more profitable company, and a company that's a great investment for shareholders as we continue down the line because the market ultimately will come to us. This is America. People want to own homes. This will stabilize, and we'll go on from there. I've been through crisis before, never like this, but everyone of these you come out stronger, better and with less competition. And that's where I think we're going.

BARTIROMO: On that note, Angelo, good to have you with us.

Mr. MOZILO: Thank you.

BARTIROMO: Thank you so much. Angelo Mozilo, Countrywide Financial.

About CNBC:
CNBC is the recognized world leader in business news, providing real-time financial market coverage and business information to more than 340 million homes worldwide, including more than 95 million households in the United States and Canada. The network's Business Day programming (weekdays from 5:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. ET) is produced at CNBC's headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., and also includes reports from CNBC news bureaus worldwide. Additionally, CNBC viewers can manage their individual investment portfolios and gain additional in-depth information from on-air reports by accessing http://www.cnbc.com.

Members of the media can receive more information about CNBC and its programming on the NBC Universal Media Village Web site at http://nbcumv.com/cnbc/.

Tools:

PrintEmail

Back to Main Page