by Tanta on 9/18/2007 07:38:00 AM

Bloomberg reports:

MT. LAUREL, N.J. - PHH Corp., the mortgage lender that agreed to be bought by General Electric Co. and Blackstone Group LP, said the $1.8 billion sale could unravel as lenders back away from some leveraged buyouts.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. told Blackstone they might fall $750 million short in funding its part of the deal, PHH said Monday. GE, which plans to keep the company's vehicle-leasing unit, might pull out if Blackstone can't get financing. . . .

PHH is the second company in a week to warn that an LBO could be derailed as banks seek to renege on lending commitments for smaller buyouts while sticking with big deals such as Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.'s $26 billion takeover of First Data Corp. Reddy Ice Holdings Inc. said last week that Morgan Stanley might back out of selling debt for GSO Capital Partners LP's purchase of the company.

"There will be some deals that won't get done, but it won't be the big names," said billionaire financier Wilbur Ross, whose New York-based WL Ross & Co. invests in distressed companies. "Some of the smaller deals have better escape hatches." . . .

"We continue to hope that Blackstone will succeed in arranging its financing so the merger can be completed," said Stephen White, a spokesman for Fairfield, Conn.-based GE. "But if Blackstone is unable to complete its purchase, GE will not be obligated to complete the merger."

In March, GE agreed to buy PHH and resell the mortgage unit to New York-based Blackstone, manager of the biggest buyout fund. PHH said Monday it told GE that it expects the company to "fulfill its obligations under the merger agreement."

In case you happen to be curious about it, PHH was once an independent company that got sucked into the Cendant conglomeration of "affiliated businesses," mixing mortgages and real estate sales and all kinds of other stuff. Then after the spectacular accounting fraud at Cendant, PHH got "spun back" to being an independent company, until GE saw a flip an investment opportunity early in the year.

PHH is a big mortgage originator, although you might not realize that because a huge chunk of its business is "private label outsourcing" of one kind or another. Lots of smaller banks and credit unions, for instance, and a few larger financial firms like AmEx use PHH to originate and service loans under a "private label" arrangement that is opaque to the consumer. PHH will, for instance, issue a separate phone number to Little Dog Bank's "mortgage department," which will be given to Little Dog's customers. When they call, the PHH reps answer "Little Dog Bank, how may I help you?" or words to that effect. So a lot of what goes on that looks like "retail" lending is actually running through PHH's fee-for-service outsourcing operations. So is a lot of "direct lending," insofar as PHH's private label clients offer their own customers a "loan by phone" option that involves calling PHH-in-drag. There can be loans brokered to Little Dog that are really closed by PHH pretending to be Little Dog Wholesale. You would need Visio more than you would need Excel.

The whole point of this, besides making it less expensive for a Little Dog or a financial services company like AmEx that doesn't primarily originate mortgages to "originate" mortgages, is the "branding" part, which involves either "seamless customer service" or "endless opportunities to sell you more stuff," depending on which PR you are reading. For a lot of outfits, the mortgage loan itself isn't the "profit center": it's the other accounts or insurance policies or what have you that can be "cross-sold" to people with mortgage loans. Alternately, the ability to offer these "private label" mortgages is a way to hang onto depositors or other account-holders who want all their accounts, including their mortgage, at one place. Of course they aren't all at one place; they look like they're all at one place. Which is why putting it all at GE, which once apparently made lightbulbs and has been in and out of the mortgage business more times than the set changes at Phantom of the Opera, makes perfect sense. If only the credit markets saw it that way.