Chase Subprime - Wholesale - Subprime

In a conference call to its Home Equity and Subprime Wholesale divisions today, Chase announced the discontinuation of all products for those divisions and told employees it was shutting down both channels. "Third party origination of Home Equity and Subprime is totally done - elimination of channel and product, so no product migration to Prime Wholesale," a source told us.

It is not yet known how many in total will be affected by layoffs. A call scheduled for the Prime Wholesale division later today may result in "some sort of downsizing there also," our source said. More information to come.

Original Ailing/Watch Listing - 2008-03-31: We thought it was just a matter of right-sizing when we reported on the mid-March layoffs to Premium members. But this email just in makes it clear Chase BC belongs on our Ailing/Watch list:

"I know this does not come as a surprise but I submitted a loan last week to Chase BC. So far in 5 business days the file has been assigned to 3 different underwriters, none of the people on my contact sheet are there and the one person I spoke with said matter of frankly: Everyone is jumping ship. It really looks bad for the one trick pony that has become Chase BC."

Here's a few of the emails we received about Chase Subprime B2B's layoffs on 2008-03-19:

"Buying Bear Sterns for hundreds of millions is the front that they want to get headlines....not what's happening with sub prime. My opinion is.....that this way they can cut it down (sub prime) to a token 50 and you don't have to grab negative headlines for shutting down a channel. This way it quietly slips away unnoticed."

"Chase Subprime B2B. (Subprime) announce it will be downsizing over 250 AE's nationwide from 300. Only 50 will be left nationwide. The Westmont, IL Subprime Center is closing and 15 Underwriters from Woodcliff, NJ have been let go today as well. The only center that will be open is Deerfield Beach, FL where only 45 subprime employees will be left."

"i just got out of the severance meeting and only 2 managers in subprime B2B remain representing the 50 remaining AE's. One handling the east side of the Mississippi. The other handling the West. All sales managers and RPMs have been let go today. We have only been receiving 5 new loan submissions a day in our center and similar numbers in Deerfield Beach, FL due to eliminating all bank statement loans and stated loan products and reducing the LTV's on all loans in all states."

"Not merging with prime....remaining separate. New product not known yet, suspicions are they may get Fha added to supplement the left over sub prime."