Fairfield-based General Electric Co. said today it is selling its portfolio of Australian mortgages and leaving the market.
Australian non-bank lender Aussie Home Loans will buy GE-owned rival Wizard in a deal that includes the Commonwealth Bank of Australia acquiring $2.7 billion of Wizard mortgages.
The price of the deal, announced by all three companies, was not disclosed.
The sale comes as GE Money, a unit of the General Electric, pulls out of the mortgage lending business in Australia and New Zealand and shrinks its GE Capital business worldwide because of the global financial crisis.
“The extreme volatility and greatly increased cost of funds on the global and local wholesale markets have made this withdrawal from the home lending business necessary,” GE Money Australia and New Zealand Chief Executive Mike Cutter said in a statement.
The Wizard sale was consistent with GE’s strategy of reducing GE Capital to approximately 30 percent to 40 percent of GE’s global business, he said. (AP)
