Services Mortgage Lending Website TheMoneyStore.com | Products Mortgage loan Owner Morton Dear Founded 1967 | |
Parent organizations Speedy Cash Holdings Corp., First Fidelity Urban Investment Corporation Subsidiaries Wachovia SBA Lending Inc | ||
The Money Store is a U.S. residential mortgage lending brand owned by MLD Mortgage Inc., a consumer finance company that is based in Florham Park, New Jersey with offices nationwide.
History
Founded in 1967 as The Money Store, Inc by Alan Turtletaub. The company was based in Union, New Jersey but most of its corporate employees were based in West Sacramento, California. It specialized in sub-prime home equity loans, and also was a large Small Business Administration lender. Alan was succeeded as president by this son, Marc Turtletaub. In 1991, the company went public, and in 1997 was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Baseball Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto (with his "holy cow" ads) was a longtime advertising pitchman for the company. He was then followed by Jim Palmer, another Hall of Famer. Several commercials also featured his wife Joni Palmer.
The company was sold to First Union Corp. of Charlotte, N.C., for $2.1 billion in June 1998. First Union, preparing for the Wachovia merger, split "The Money Store" into four divisions and dumped all of First Union's bad home equity loans into The Money Store's home equity division and took it off its company books two years later, at a loss of $1.7 billion. The company then transferred it to Wachovia along with 13 billion in shares. However, the student loan division, Educaid, and the SBA loan division were retained by First Union.
In 2006, Wachovia (formerly First Union) sold The Money Store name to MLD Mortgage, Inc. There's no direct connection to the old West Sacramento-based company, but a veteran executive of the old company operates it. Morton Dear, chief financial officer of original The Money Store, is the founder and chairman of the new incarnation.