M&A, Secondary Transactions

First American Corp. announced Monday that it will acquire LoanPerformance, an industry supplier of advanced analytics and information, in a deal expected to close this month.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

First American, of Santa Ana, Calif., said the acquisition accelerates its move into the information analytics arena and helps to maximize the value of its property information database assets, which it hopes will lead to the creation of the next generation of products for compressing the lending process and lowering costs.

LoanPerformance brings First American customers that include government sponsored entities, ratings agencies, mortgage-backed securities investors, major Wall Street investment banks and some of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders and servicers, according to the announcement.

Dan Feshbach will remain as chief executive of LoanPerformance, which will continue to be headquartered in San Francisco, First American said.

Information technology and service provider Fiserv Inc. announced Thursday it acquired Del Mar Database as part of its strategy to provide end-to-end solutions to the mortgage industry.

Del Mar, a provider of automation systems for small to mid-sized residential lenders, enables Fiserv to expand its offerings to brokers. The San Diego-based company’s 40 employees, including its president John Walsh, are expected to join Fiserv, the announcement said.

Fiserv, of Brookfield, Wis., which reported $3.4 billion in processing and services revenues for 2004, acquired Del Mar, which recorded annual revenue of about $12 million, from MHT Partners L.P., Timeline Ventures and Titan Investment Partners LLC.

Riverview Bancorp, recently announced it has received regulatory approval to acquire American Pacific Bank and is pending approval from shareholders of American in an April 21 meeting. The Vancouver, Wash.-based company hopes to close the transaction within the second quarter.

The merger with Portland-based American Pacific will expand the footprint of Riverview Mortgage’s parent into Oregon, the announcement said.

Commercial Federal Corp. said Thursday it will sell its $10 billion national third-party servicing portfolio and correspondent mortgage origination network to Wells Fargo Bank N.A.

“The size of our mortgage servicing for others portfolio created too much variability in our earnings and that detracted from the performance of the rest of the bank,” Commercial president Fred Kulikowski said in the prepared statement. The strategic decision to exit third party servicing, a move estimated to incur a total after-tax charge to Commercial’s first quarter earnings approximating $65 million, will allow it to focus on growing the company’s core businesses of retail and commercial banking and “drive the most profitable long-term growth,” he added.

Thus, commercial will continue to offer a full line of mortgage loan products and services in its seven-state market area of Nebraska, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arizona.

However, the portfolio and correspondent network exchange will result in 135 layoffs at its Omaha, Neb., headquarters. Commercial is taking a number of actions to minimize layoffs to 100, including possibly positioning some of the employees within different areas of the company, spokeswoman Celia Ferrel told MortgageDaily.com.