WASHINGTON – US mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac said Friday it lost $6.3 billion for shareholders in the third quarter but would not seek any additional bailout funds from the government.
The firm, which was seized by the government and placed into conservatorship along with rival Fannie Mae, said it had a net loss of $5.0 billion and paid a dividend to the US Treasury of $1.3 billion in the quarter.
The shareholder-owned, government chartered firm said, however, it would not seek further Treasury aid, unlike its cousin Fannie Mae.
Freddie Mac said it had a positive net worth as of September 30 of $10.4 billion, reflecting "improved values on the company's available-for-sale securities."
"As a result of the positive net worth, no additional funding from the US Department of the Treasury was required," it said.
"During this critical time for homeowners and the market, we continued to support the recovery of the housing market by providing a stable source of mortgage funding and helping people keep their homes," said Freddie Mac chief executive Charles Haldeman.
"In the third quarter, we helped more than 100,000 borrowers avoid foreclosure... We expect this to continue."
Earlier this week, Fannie Mae reported a net loss of 18.9 billion dollars in the third quarter, and said it needed an additional $15 billion in taxpayer funds.
Fannie and Freddie have already received hundreds of billions of dollars as part of a government takeover aimed at avoiding their collapse in the wake of the subprime mortgage crisis.
The two firms, which underpin trillions of dollars in home loans, were at the epicenter of the financial crisis as the US housing bubble collapsed.
Fannie Mae was originally a government agency created during the Great Depression to help provide liquidity for housing. It was privatized in 1968 and Freddie Mac was chartered by Congress in 1970 to provide competition.
But many officials and analysts argue there was a contradiction in the mission of the two, which tried to maximize results for shareholders at the same time seeking to lower the cost of mortgage credit.
