DES MOINES, IA – Wells Fargo Financial — the consumer finance subsidiary of Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) — said today it has signed a definitive agreement to sell its Consumer Auto Receivables business unit to CompuCredit Corporation (Nasdaq: CCRT), an Atlanta-based consumer finance company. The two parties did not disclose terms of the sale, expected to close in the first quarter of 2005.
As of November 2004, Consumer Auto Receivables had approximately $133 million in assets. It operates in 40 states through its 12 branches, three regional processing centers, and its national collection center and headquarters in Lake Mary, Fla. The company has approximately 270 employees, including 64 in-field sales representatives.
CompuCredit agreed to acquire substantially all of the Consumer Auto Receivables assets and business operations and hire substantially all of its employees.
“This is an exciting opportunity for our group to grow the Consumer Auto Receivables business,” said Richard Potter, president of Consumer Auto Receivables. “Our core business of providing account acquisition and servicing programs designed to improve automotive dealers’ cash flow will represent a new market for CompuCredit.”
CompuCredit is a credit card company that uses analytical techniques, including sophisticated computer models, to market general-purpose credit cards and related fee-based products and services. The company currently serves more than 2 million customers nationwide. For more information about CompuCredit, visit www.compucredit.com.
Wells Fargo Financial remains one of the premier non-prime automobile lenders in North America through its Philadelphia-based Wells Fargo Financial Acceptance business unit. Acceptance has more than $8 billion in receivables, approximately 580,000 customers and more than 3,000 team members throughout North America and Puerto Rico.
“This sale represents less than 2 percent of our overall auto-lending receivables and allows us to focus on our core auto-lending businesses,” said Tom Shippee, Wells Fargo Financial president and chief executive officer. “We remain committed to providing the best service possible to our auto financing customers, a market we serve primarily through the Wells Fargo Financial Acceptance team. We believe this provides us the best opportunity to cross- sell our extensive array of financial products and services.”
Wells Fargo Financial, a unit of Wells Fargo & Company, is a $34 billion company providing consumer installment and home equity lending, automobile financing, consumer and private-label credit cards and commercial services to consumers and businesses. The company has approximately 18,250 employees and operates in 48 U.S. states, the 10 provinces of Canada, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands. It is based in Des Moines, Iowa. More information about Wells Fargo Financial is available at www.wellsfargofinancial.com.
Wells Fargo & Company is a diversified financial services company with $422 billion in assets, providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage and consumer finance to more than 23 million customers from more than 6,000 stores and the Internet (wellsfargo.com) across North America and elsewhere internationally. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. is the only “Aaa”- rated bank in the United States. Visit Wells Fargo at www.wellsfargo.com.
