September 22, 2007 (LPAC)--Wilbur Ross, the private equity fund shark known for buying steel companies on the cheap, consolidating them at the cost of thousands of jobs, and then selling them for super profits, is now looking hungrily at the mortgage business, just as Federal Reserve-organized bail out funds are starting to pour in. According to today's New York Times, Ross's W.L. Ross & Co. is looking to buy the service unit of American Home Mortgage, which collects homeowners' mortgage payments, for $435 million.

American Home Mortgage is in bankruptcy because, like a few dozen other mortgage companies, it lost the support of the banks that financed its loans. Ross admitted that there is risk in moving into the mortgage business at this time but "we are private equity investors so we have a very long-term business horizon."