Nationstar, which recently sold stock to the public, is continuing negotiations to buy Residential Capital Corp./GMAC from Ally Financial through a prepackaged bankruptcy agreement, according to industry advisors briefed on the plan.
If the deal comes off, Nationstar would gain $382 billion of mortgage servicing rights, giving it close to $500 billion of residential receivables. At that point it would rank fifth among all servicers behind Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase and Citigroup, according to figures compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Ally has received “conditional” approval from the U.S. Treasury Department to place ResCap into bankruptcy. (Treasury owns 74% of Ally.)
In an Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing last week ResCap admitted for the first time publicly that it might file for bankruptcy protection.
One source said Nationstar has talked to several investment banking firms about financing a bankruptcy-related purchase of ResCap/GMAC.
A spokeswoman for Ally declined to comment on the Bloomberg report.
Late last month Nationstar filed an SEC statement saying it would sell $275 million of senior notes to investors through investment banking firms led by Credit Suisse Securities, Barclays Capital Inc., Merrill Lynch, Citigroup Global Markets, RBS Securities Inc. and Wells Fargo Securities.
The notes, payable in 2019, yield 9.625%.
The proceeds, in theory, could be used to finance the ResCap deal.