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56 | Th e M Rep o RT O r i g i nat i O n s e r v i c i n g a na ly t i c s s e c O n da r y m a r k e t SECONDARY MARKET the latest Fannie mae cOO announces Plans to leave in 2015 Terence W. edWards plans To deparT from The company nexT year. i n a filing with the Se- curities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Fannie Mae revealed that Terence W. Edwards, currently COO and EVP, has notified the company of his intent to leave sometime during the first half of 2015. In a statement, the com- pany credited Edwards with having had "an enormous, positive impact . . . in com- bating the housing crisis and supporting the recovery." "He built the country's most successful loss mitiga- tion program from the ground up, helping families avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes," the state- ment reads. To ensure a smooth transition, Fannie Mae has already transitioned Edwards' responsibili- ties for its credit portfolio management organization to Joy Cianci, who the company said "is an expe- rienced and proven leader." Until a successor to the COO role is named, Edwards will remain on in that position, continuing to be responsible for over- sight of Fannie Mae's other strategic initiatives and playing a role in its work on forging a common se- curitization platform with Freddie Mac. Justice department and Bank of america continue Fight in 'Hustle' case The bank seeks to throw out verdict stemming from actions taken by Countrywide before acquisition. t he ongoing legal battle between the U.S. gov- ernment and Bank of America over the sale of soured loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the financial meltdown continued in earnest recently as lawyers for the gov- ernment argued against a motion to throw out a fraud verdict rendered against the bank. In a court filing, attorneys for the Justice Department said Bank of America's attempt to overturn last October's fraud verdict— which resulted in a $1.3 billion civ- il penalty—"[defies] the evidence, the law, and common sense." The department's argument came as a response to a late August filing by lawyers rep- resenting the megabank, who then said the government failed to conclusively prove that Bank of America's Countrywide unit misrepresented the quality of loans packaged and sold to the GSEs in the lead-up to the housing crash. In their own filing, Bank of America's team argued "the evi- dence unambiguously showed that the ... loans sold to Fannie and Freddie were well within industry standards for loan quality, and thus Fannie and Freddie received exactly what they paid for." The bulk of the case re- volved around a program at Countrywide called the High Speed Swim Lane (HSSL, or Hustle), which critics say em- phasized production speed and volume at the expense of loan quality. The program ended before Bank of America's acquisi- tion of Countrywide in 2008. Also charged in the case was former Countywide official Rebecca Mairone, who the gov- ernment accused of pushing the Hustle program against evidence that the loans being made were low-quality. Mairone was also found guilty and was ordered to pay $1 million. That judgment has also been disputed, with Mairone's attorney arguing "there was insufficient evidence for the jury to conclude that Mairone knew of any HSSL loans that were sold to the GSEs as 'investment quality' despite be- ing ineligible for sale." An after-hours call to a Bank of America spokesperson was not answered, and a request for comment from Mairone's attorney was not immediately returned.