Mark Bouris, one of the former owners of Wizard Home Loans, is seeking vendor finance from GE Capital to fund a purchase of the business that he sold to GE three and a half years ago,
The Australian reported.
Bouris, working through his firm State Capital Corp, is working on the plan with a number of Wizard franchisees. One of them, Elsternwick principal Mark Livens, is the only named source in the newspaper's article. Livens said he had been included in some of the discussions but had not yet made a decision.
GE bought Wizard and also the Australian Financial Investments Group wholesale funding business from companies associated with Bouris in late 2004.
GE may also not have made a decision and may seek offers from other lenders for the mortgage financing business this week, according to the newspaper.
Rumours of a sale of Wizard back to interests associated with Bouris have floated around for several months.
GE recently confirmed the shift of around 50 staff to Sydney from Melbourne, with the consolidation of mortgage processing for the Australian Finance Investment Group wholesale financing arm in Sydney.
It isn't clear if Bouris proposes to include AFIG in any purchase of Wizard or whether GE may seek to sell this business as well.
Key consumer lending businesses of GE Money struggled to hit sales targets during 2007. These business trends preceded the affect of the global credit crunch.
In December 2007 The Sheet reported that balance growth on Wizard mortgages, Aussie personal loans and Myer Black charge cards - all GE funded products - were all below budget, and that Wizard, the only long-term business of the three, was producing top line results worse than in 2006.
A tightening of credit standards across all businesses of GE Capital has since slowed growth further.
At the time the newsletter reported that Wizard Home Loans was tracking underneath 2006 outcomes on many management metrics. Data reported then showed that loan settlements, in the order of $400 million a month, were off by one seventh and leads by forty per cent, even though Wizard outranks all mortgage brands on the internet.