Beleaguered Thornburg Mortgage Inc. has cut 16 percent of its staff. The company, which has halted originations, has failed to complete a much needed exchange offer and is struggling to survive, still calls itself “a leading single-family residential mortgage lender.”
Thornburg said yesterday that it eliminated 29 jobs. The cuts included sales and support positions. The layoffs were attributed to “unprecedented turmoil in the mortgage financing and credit markets.”
Half of the job cuts were in Santa Fe, N.M., where it is based. The other half were scattered throughout the nation.
The company now employs just 156 people — about half as many as it employed at the end of 2006. In a recent investor conference call, its President Larry Goldstone said the company is not originating new loans.
In a statement today, Thornburg said it was unable to complete an exchange offer and was forced to return $189 million in escrow funds. The extension and amendment of the exchange offer was the result of Thornburg’s inability to resolve reverse repurchase agreement with its counterparties.
Despite the turmoil and likely failure of the jumbo lender, its announcements continue to tout the company as “a leading single-family residential mortgage lender focused principally on prime and super-prime borrowers seeking jumbo and super-jumbo adjustable-rate mortgages.”
