| Up to 300 lose their jobs at area mortgage company
In another indicator of the turbulence buffeting the subprime mortgage industry, as many as 300 Sacramento-area Ameriquest Mortgage Co. employees were issued pink slips Thursday. A spokesman for Ameriquest's parent company, ACC Capital Holdings, would not say how many jobs were eliminated at its Rancho Cordova office, but several employees estimated between 250 and 300 were employed at the Mather Field location. In a press release Thursday that announced unspecified layoffs across the country, the company, based in the Orange County city of Orange, said local loan operations would be folded into the company's Southern California offices. .
Mortgage firms plan big cutbacks
Amid rising levels of defaults and foreclosures in the home-lending industry, nearly 900 Chicago-area workers at four mortgage firms will lose their jobs, according to recent filings with Illinois employment officials.
ACC Capital Holdings, an Orange, Calif.-based financial service company whose subsidiaries include subprime lender Ameriquest Mortgage Co., told the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity in three separate filings last month that it is cutting a total of 515 jobs at three locations: 174 jobs at 1600 McConnor Pkwy. in Schaumburg, as well as 341 jobs at two addresses on Golf Road in Rolling Meadows.
The layoffs, announced March 15 and affecting all business lines, will begin May 25. The filings were published on the department's Web site Tuesday.
Stocks rebound following sell-off
Stock markets in Europe and Asia have shown signs of recovery following yesterday's global-sell off, which was prompted by fears about the health of the US economy and its mortgage market. London's FTSE 100 index was up 1.37 per cent to 6,083.10 in early trading, having lost 2.5 per cent off the value of its shares at the close of the previous day. Germany's Dax 30 index was also up 1.7 per cent following heavy losses and France 's Cac 40 showed signs of a similar rebound, up 1.5 per cent. Meanwhile, Japan 's Nikkei benchmark index recovered just half of its losses from the previous day, climbing 1.1 per cent to end on 16,860.39, having fallen by almost three per cent on Wednesday. The boosts came after US stocks rebounded in late trading yesterday, with the Dow Jones index closing 0.48 per cent up on 12,133.40 and the Nasdaq up 0.9 per cent.
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