UWM's president and CEO explains why the Two Harbors bidding war is a win for his company either way
Mat Ishbia has a simple way of looking at the Two Harbors deal, whether it closes or it doesn't.
"We're in a great position either way," the United Wholesale Mortgage president and CEO told Mortgage Professional America at UWM Live on Thursday in Pontiac, Michigan.
The proposed acquisition of Two Harbors Investment Corp. has become one of the more protracted bidding battles in recent mortgage industry history.
UWM and Two Harbors first announced a definitive all-stock merger in December 2025. The deal unraveled in March 2026 when CrossCountry Mortgage, the nation's largest distributed retail lender, surfaced with a competing all-cash bid and absorbed a $25.4 million termination fee on Two Harbors' behalf, prompting the board to shift its recommendation.
UWM responded with a counterbid, and the two sides have been escalating ever since. A pivotal shareholder vote is now set for May 19.
Ishbia, speaking directly to reporters, said the trouble started with what UWM found during due diligence.
"I originally did a deal, thought I was buying a servicing book along with some expertise in capital markets, along with a servicing platform that was pretty good," Ishbia said. "When we did due diligence, we found out it was just a really great servicing book."
Once it became clear to Two Harbors' leadership that UWM had no use for their management team, the relationship turned.
"Their management team didn't like that we had no need for them," Ishbia said. "And so they basically figured out, is there a way they can get out of this and find someone else?"
On the value of that management team, he didn't mince words.
"I don't like to say zero value, but zero value," he said. "And they know that, and we told them that, and they didn't like that."
What UWM was really after
For Ishbia, the pitch was straightforward from the start: scale. UWM has been building out its in-house servicing operation, and the Two Harbors deal was a way to accelerate the growth of that book, not to add staff or infrastructure.
"We already have servicing in-house. It's already here," he said. "This was just to take our 700,000 clients and go up to 1.3 million. That was always just scale because our servicing platform is already the best in the country right now."
He pointed to UWM's call center response times as proof.
"People wait 18 minutes at Cenlar or Mr. Cooper, these places, and you wait not even 10 seconds to pick up a call at UWM,” Ishbia said.
He was equally direct about why UWM doesn't need an acquisition to sustain its servicing business.
"Why everyone else goes out and tries to buy MSRs is because they can't actually originate them," Ishbia said. "We do 50 billion a quarter, so we're able to originate them and keep them ourselves. And this was a way to kind of like leapfrog a little bit of scale. And that was the goal."
The fallout and what comes next
With Two Harbors' board backing CrossCountry's all-cash deal ahead of the May 19 vote, Ishbia said UWM remains composed and suggested the competing offer cost CrossCountry more than expected.
"If they get out of it, which is very possible, very likely, it costs the other person a lot more money than they expected," he said. "So we feel good about where we're at."
He also took a harder line on whether Two Harbors' outreach to a third party crossed a legal line.
"That's against the law, what they did," Ishbia said. "But it's okay. We'll see how that plays out."
As for whether the deal's potential collapse signals a more aggressive acquisition strategy ahead, Ishbia pushed back.
"Not aggressively at all," he said. "We don't need anything. We have a self-sustaining, successful business."
He was direct about what he would have done differently.
"If I would have known what I know now about how little value the rest of the company was, I wouldn't have pursued it," he said.
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