ABN Amro's US mortgage operation has acquired the mortgage.com and hipoteca.com (Spanish for mortgages) domain names for an undisclosed sum.
The two names were put up for auction by Mortgage.com, Inc. a Florida-based e-commerce operation which went belly up in October. ABN Amro was the highest bidder for the defunct group's prized URL.
Announcing the closure of its operation in October with the loss of 518 jobs, Mortgage.com chairman Seth Werner, offered the following brutal assessment: "In the final analysis, at this point, the online mortgage industry has not been able to demonstrate its ability to deliver cost-effective mortgage loans to consumers at a profit."
Explaining its acqusition, the US subsidiary of the giant Dutch bank would only say: "The names will be used in further development of the mortgage e-commerce strategy of ABN Amro Mortgage Group."
ABM Amro Mortgage Group ranked sixth in mortgage lending and tenth in loans serviced in the United States through the third quarter of 2000