Ameriquest founder will give up ambassador’s post
Roland Arnall, a major Republican financier who helped create and ultimately became a symbol of the troubled sub-prime mortgage industry, is resigning his post as U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.
Arnall, founder of Ameriquest Mortgage Co. of Orange, once the nation’s largest sub-prime lender, is returning home to be with his adult son, who is battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma. His resignation is effective March 7.
“Thank you for the trust you placed in me, and the opportunity to serve our country,” Arnall wrote President Bush in a letter dated Feb. 19.
He added: We “have strengthened our alliance with the Dutch government and our long-standing friendship with the Dutch people.”
Arnall, who has a home in Holmby Hills, is best known as a pioneer in providing mortgages to borrowers with weak credit. Ameriquest became a leader in the sub-prime mortgage industry but came under fire for alleged predatory lending practices, including pushing unqualified buyers into high-cost loans they couldn’t afford.
Those allegations and a probe by state regulators clouded Arnall’s confirmation as ambassador in late 2005 and early 2006, when Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee refused to endorse him.
Among those critics was Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
“I don’t think it sends a good message that an ambassador to an important ally like the Netherlands has a cloud hanging over him,” Obama said at the time.
The company paid $325 million in 2006 to settle charges of predatory lending, and Arnall was confirmed as ambassador soon afterward. But Ameriquest foundered amid shrinking business and an industrywide shakeout in sub-prime lending and soon began laying off workers and winding down operations.
Last September, Citigroup Inc. said it would buy the remnants of Ameriquest from the parent company Arnall established, ACC Capital Holdings in Orange.
Arnall’s tenure in the Netherlands did not generate much news, although Dutch defense officials summoned Arnall in January to express their displeasure over criticism of NATO forces in Afghanistan by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.
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