Angelo Mozilo, a founding father of Countrywide Monetary who presided over that lending big’s speedy ascent after which its collapse in the course of the monetary disaster of 2008, died on Sunday. He was 84.

His dying, within the Santa Barbara, Calif., space, was introduced in an announcement by the Mozilo Household Basis, the household’s philanthropic group. It didn’t specify a trigger.

Countrywide was a significant participant within the run-up to the housing disaster, when looser monetary laws enabled lenders to aggressively promote dangerous mortgage merchandise to potential householders, contributing to a bubble in housing costs. That burst, in 2008, when residence values got here crashing down, led the U.S. economic system into a chronic recession.

Mr. Mozilo, who was the son of a Bronx butcher and labored his manner by Fordham College, grew to become one of the vital acknowledged executives related to the disaster. Motivated by his modest beginnings, he had constructed Countrywide into one of many nation’s largest mortgage lenders by the early 2000s. However he nonetheless wasn’t happy: He wished the corporate to realize 30 to 40 p.c market share, way over any single lender had achieved.

Countrywide started pushing gross sales of advanced mortgages to potential householders with weaker monetary profiles, a bunch sometimes called “subprime” debtors. The loans required little or no cash down and put many debtors in properties they’d have in any other case been unable to afford. Many of those loans, often known as “no-doc” loans, didn’t require any revenue verification.

That go-go gross sales tradition propelled the corporate’s progress and income however in the end led to its downfall. Because the housing market crashed and borrower defaults soared, Countrywide’s lending practices got here below the scrutiny of legislators, regulators and shopper advocates.

Monetary pressures started to mount, and the corporate, based mostly in Calabasas, Calif., west of Los Angeles, was acquired by Financial institution of America in 2008 on the fireplace sale worth of $4 billion. However the buy ended up costing Financial institution of America billions extra in authorized and different prices it had inherited.

On the time, practically 150 mortgage lenders had failed, lots of which had been taken over by more healthy establishments.

Mr. Mozilo, recognizable by his crisp fits and deep tan, continued to defend his firm all through the ordeal. “Countrywide was one of many biggest firms within the historical past of this nation,” he informed congressional examiners in September 2010, greater than two years after Financial institution of America purchased the corporate.

Regulators had a decidedly totally different take. In October 2010, Mr. Mozilo agreed to pay $22.5 million to settle federal costs that he had misled buyers about Countrywide’s dangerous mortgage portfolio. On the time, the settlement was the biggest penalty levied by the Securities and Alternate Fee in opposition to a senior govt of a public firm.

As a part of the deal, Mr. Mozilo, who didn’t admit or deny wrongdoing, agreed to forfeit $45 million in “ill-gotten features” to settle insider buying and selling and different costs.

Angelo Robert Mozilo, the oldest of 5 kids, was born on Dec. 16, 1938, within the Bronx, the place he was raised. When he was about 12, he began serving to his father, Ralph Mozilo, in his butcher store, cleansing flooring and chopping up chickens, based on his member profile within the Horatio Alger Affiliation.

By the point he was 14 he had his first job within the monetary business, working as a messenger boy for a Manhattan mortgage firm.

He was married to Phyllis (Ardese) Mozilo for greater than 50 years. She died in 2017. He’s survived by their 5 kids, Christy Mozilo Larsen and David, Elizabeth, Eric and Mark Mozilo; and 11 grandchildren.

Mr. Mozilo mentioned he had been unfairly portrayed because the villain of the housing disaster when scores of different lenders had been concerned, a perspective echoed by his household.

“Unbiased of how folks exterior of the business might understand this man, insiders know what an unimaginable power he was,” Eric Mozilo mentioned in a LinkedIn put up on Tuesday.

“He was a superb father and a legend within the mortgage business,” he added throughout a cellphone name.

Mr. Mozilo and a accomplice, David Loeb, who died in 2003, began Countrywide in 1969 with $500,000. Inside just a few many years, the corporate had grown from a conservative residence lender, initially based mostly in New York, to the biggest mortgage lender in the USA. As of 2007, it had 900 workplaces and $200 billion in property and made $500 billion in loans that yr.

Within the early Nineteen Nineties, after authorities knowledge revealed that lenders had been disproportionately rejecting minority debtors for residence loans, Countrywide noticed an untapped market and commenced providing extra loans in low-income and minority communities.

“After I first introduced the loans into the workplace, they mentioned: ‘You’re nuts, you’re loopy, don’t do that. There’s a purpose why we’re rejecting these folks,’” Mr. Mozilo later informed the congressional fee investigating the disaster. The mortgage officers, he mentioned, “had very static, rigid pointers.”

As he noticed it, Countrywide was serving to to interrupt down the racial and financial obstacles to homeownership.

So he put the employees by “sensitivity coaching” and employed extra Black and Hispanic staff. Countrywide quickly began approving one mortgage for each two functions reviewed, based on Mr. Mozilo. Beforehand, it had been approving one mortgage for each 4 functions. The brand new loans “did carry out,” he mentioned.

However that efficiency didn’t final. In 2006, Mr. Mozilo described a few of the firm’s riskier loans as “poison,” based on inner Countrywide emails launched by the S.E.C. in 2009. “In all my years within the enterprise, I’ve by no means seen a extra poisonous” product, he wrote in a single e mail.

Greater than a decade later, Mr. Mozilo recalled how troublesome that interval was for his household, however continued to defend his and his firm’s legacy at a monetary convention in Las Vegas.

“In fact it bothers me,” he mentioned, based on a 2019 CNBC report. “It affected my fame, it affected my household, it had a profound influence on my total life. So I cared. Then a whole lot of years glided by, and my spouse handed away, and I turned 80 years previous, and now I don’t care. There’s different issues extra necessary in life.”

Ben Protess contributed reporting.