PacWest sells its real-estate lending business to Roc360
By Mike Murphy
PacWest Bancorp will sell its real-estate lending arm to Roc360, as the beleaguered regional bank moves to refocus on its core business.
The deal, first reported late Tuesday by the Wall Street Journal, comes a day after Los Angeles-based PacWest (PACW) unveiled a plan to sell a $2.6 billion portfolio of real-estate construction loans.
In a statement Tuesday night, Roc360 said it will buy PacWest's Civic Financial Services unit for an undisclosed sum. Roc360 will take on the unit's business operations, but not its previously extended loans or loan-servicing operations.
"In the face of market difficulties, we continue to expand and develop more products and services for real-estate investors," Roc360 Chief Executive Arvind Raghunathan said in a statement. "We believe that America's housing stock is severely undersupplied, with more than 50% of homes in deferred maintenance, lacking the modern-day energy efficiencies that our clients install with each loan they take from us. We will continue to prudently expand and invest for long-term solutions to these structural problems."
New York-based Roc360 is a financial services platform for residential real-estate investors, and includes the brands Roc Capital, Finance of America Commercial, ElmSure, Wimba Title and Tamarisk Appraisals.
On Tuesday, PacWest shares jumped 8% on news of Monday's loan sale, which also fueled gains among other regional-bank stocks.
PacWest shares have sunk nearly 70% year to date, amid a wider downturn by regional banks following the failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank.
-Mike Murphy
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May 24, 2023 07:53 ET (11:53 GMT)
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