The company was founded in 1955 as
Pacific Western Mortgage Company. It went through several mergers and became known as
Weyerhaeuser Mortgage Company (owned by US timber company
Weyerhaeuser). In the late 1990s it was sold to
private equity firm Apollo Global Management, and entered the subprime mortgage lending business. In 2004,
GE Money (formerly GE Consumer Finance), owned by
General Electric, bought WMC Mortgage for about $500 million. WMC Mortgage catered to consumers with less than perfect borrower profiles. The company was among the largest subprime lenders in the United States, ranking seventh in 2005 and fifth in 2006 in the dollar volume of subprime mortgage originations. GE ceased WMC's operations in late 2007 due to the
subprime market collapse. GE's WMC Mortgage unit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. ==References==