Goldman Sachs isn’t sitting out the foreclosure fiasco, as much as it might like to.
Goldman financial chief David Viniar said Tuesday that Goldman’s Litton Loan Servicing has 23,000 loans in the foreclosure process. That’s just a fraction of the loans being foreclosed by the biggest mortgage companies, but it could pull Goldman – which just spent $550 million settling a high-profile SEC case — into a legal free-for-all.
Litton said two weeks ago it was suspending foreclosures in some states to review its actions. Viniar said Tuesday Litton is undergoing an “extensive review of its processes,” though he stressed that he doesn’t believe Goldman faces a large bill for resolving any problems.
“We really are pretty small,” Viniar said on a conference call with investors. “We don’t view our exposure there as being large in the context of the marketplace.”
Legal challenges to the banks’ handling of homeownership documents have emerged as a major question in the past week. Bank stocks tumbled last week after JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon conceded the bank may have to pay penalties to settle probes announced this month by the 50 state attorneys general.
Estimates of the largest banks’ individual exposure to settlement costs range as high as $1 billion, though it is early yet to consider the all-in costs of fixing the banks’ foreclosure factory.
Moody’s last week put Litton’s servicer quality ratings on review for a possible downgrade, following the Oct. 8 announcement of the foreclosure suspensions. The review could slow down Litton’s foreclosure processing pipeline as well as raise reputational and legal risks, Moody’s said. Litton services almost 309,000 mortgage loans.
“The impact of the possible servicing irregularities on the validity of previous foreclosures and on Litton’s servicing operations remains uncertain,” Moody’s said.
Goldman bought Litton at the end of 2007, taking advantage of the collapse of financing for risky mortgage-related operations. Litton promised a steady stream of fees, but it hasn’t come without its share of complications. The firm was among the first subprime lenders to reduce principal on troubled mortgages, but it has been the subject of numerous consumer complaints.
Viniar said repeatedly that the foreclosure situation is “fluid” but stressed that Goldman believes it isn’t facing big problems because it has been a “tiny underwriter” of mortgages.