A year ago, long before anyone talked about a coronavirus, Rocket Companies‘ stock performance, or the curious acronym S-P-A-C, Mat Ishbia had set his plan in motion.
Ishbia’s company, United Wholesale Mortgage, had by that point climbed the ranks to become the second-biggest mortgage originator in the country. UWM issued nearly 350,000 mortgages worth $108 billion in 2019, about three times more than the year prior. He hired thousands of workers at UWM’s 60-acre headquarters outside Detroit, championed the resurrection of the independent mortgage broker, rolled out a suite of new technologies, had a few dust-ups with hometown rival Quicken Loans (now Rocket), and generally ate the lunch of legacy banks and Wall Street-backed competitors alike.
But Ishbia was still biding his time. To execute upon his vision, he needed capital. Lots of it. Ishbia needed to go public.
And so, a day after Rocket announced a rebranding of its wholesale/partner channel, Ishbia dropped his bombshell: the 40-year-old executive would merge his company with an Alec Gores-created SPAC, giving him a 94% stake in a new residential mortgage company valued at $16.1 billion. As part of the merger, the new company would receive nearly $1 billion in fresh capital to roll out new technology, hire even more workers, and scale up.
The post As UWM attempts to build an empire, brokers and rivals weigh in on Mat Ishbia’s $16B plan appeared first on HousingWire.