WORLD PROPERTY CHANNEL ®

(ATLANTA, GA) -- Invesco Ltd. sees good money to be made from bad mortgages.

The Atlanta-based global investment management company has rounded up a team of mortgage-buying specialists that plans to shell out up to $1 billion in buying so-called toxic assets from banks around the country.

Invesco and its associates will partner with the Treasury Department's Public Private Investment Program, previously announced by Secretary Timothy Geithner.

The Treasury has up to $100 billion to spend in the program.  The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is guaranteeing the deals will go through.

The Invesco team, announced today, includes its distressed investment affiliate, W.L. Ross & Co., the LeFrak Organization, Assured Guaranty Ltd., American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., Muriel Siebert and Co., Williams Capital Group and the Jackson Securities affiliate of 103-year-old Atlanta Financial Group.

"We strongly believe that the Public-Private Investment Program will help stimulate the mortgage market and provide individual and institutional investors globally with compelling investment opportunities in the Legacy Securities and Legacy Loan programs," says Martin L. Flanagan, President and CEO of Invesco.

He says, "Our fixed income team has delivered sound investment results across the entire range of fixed income, in particular within the residential and commercial mortgage backed securities markets, and has helped Invesco itself maintain a strong and healthy financial standing throughout the market crisis

Wilbur Ross, Chairman of WL Ross & Co. and of Invesco Private Capital adds, "We are prepared to invest up to $1 billion in these programs and are delighted that the LeFrak Organization, major property developers and owners, will co-invest with us and that its CEO, Richard LeFrak, will join the supervisory council of the consortium."

Ross says he is confident the investment team "will benefit from the mortgage market knowledge bases and skills of two of our portfolio companies: American Home Mortgage Services, Inc., the largest servicer of subprime mortgages (525,000 loans in all 50 states and $110 billion servicing portfolio) and Assured Guaranty Ltd., a leading monoline insurer with proven risk management of commercial and residential mortgage backed securities."    

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