WILMINGTON, Del. AP – Fears that troubled mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. has been on the verge of bankruptcy were due to unfounded rumors, Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Ken Lewis said Monday.
“I think the bankruptcy was a malicious rumor,” said Lewis, denying that government pressure to keep the nation’s largest mortgage lender out of bankruptcy played any role in his company’s decision to acquire Countrywide for $4.1 billion in stock, rescuing the country’s biggest mortgage lender and expanding the financial services empire of the nation’s largest consumer bank.
