Aseem Mital is methodical by nature.
The chief executive of Orange-based ACC Capital Holdings Corp., parent of the country’s largest subprime mortgage lender Ameriquest Mortgage Co., lights up when asked about his management style, which is heavy on metrics and white-board diagrams.
“Process, efficiency, re-engineering,these are some of my favorite things,” Mital said.
His 11th floor corner office is filled with management books from the likes of Jack Welch and Rudy Giuliani.
Otherwise, the office is sparse, save a giant white board. A chart of rising interest rates sits on a conference table.
Mital, a native of India, is an engineer by training who started his career on the production line of a Daimler-Benz truck plant.
He’s come a long way since then, running a massive mortgage company whose subsidiaries made about $75 billion in loans last year.
But his engineering side never is far behind.
“A lot of planning is involved before a decision is made,” Mital said. “We’re very metric oriented, throughout the company. Everything must be measurable. Otherwise you can’t tell if you are improving.”
Mital has been busy with a big re-engineering project at Ameriquest, which focuses on making home loans to borrowers with imperfect credit.
The privately held company, founded 26 years ago by Los Angeles billionaire and U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands Roland Arnall, unveiled sweeping changes earlier this month.
The company said it was closing 229 branches across the country and replacing them with four big processing centers strategically placed,as Mital notes,in each time zone.
The shift brought a headline-grabbing 3,800 layoffs,about a third of Ameriquest’s work force.
For more on the story, see teh May 22 issue of the Business Journal.
