Freddie Mac / FRE

About Freddie Mac

8200 Jones Branch Dr., McLean, Va. 22102
www.freddiemac.com | 703-903-2000
Founded: 1970 | Local employees: 5,006

Industry: Financial Services | Category: Top 100 Companies

Four years after disclosing accounting problems that plunged the company into scandal, swept out top executives, and resulted in the restatement of past earnings by billions of dollars, Freddie Mac is trying to put its house in order by resuming a basic function of any public company: issuing timely financial reports.
In March 2006, the company issued its first timely annual report since 2002, and it predicted it would get its quarterly financial reporting back on track in the second half of 2007.
The delayed recovery frustrated Freddie Mac's leadership, left shareholders with limited information and provoked criticism from regulators.
In August 2006, citing weaknesses in Freddie Mac's internal systems, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight prevailed in asking Freddie Mac to voluntarily limit its growth. The agreement restricts the expansion of Freddie Mac's mortgage investments, a major source of profit, until the company returns to timely financial reporting.
One of the executives responsible for rebuilding Freddie Mac's troubled financial systems, finance chief Martin F. Baumann, left in March 2006. In October, the company announced it was replacing him with Anthony S. "Buddy" Piszel, a former finance chief of Health Net.
Long-stalled efforts to tighten supervision of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were renewed in March 2007 when the House Financial Services Committee advanced a bill that would give regulators the ability to restrict the scale of the companies' investments.
The Federal Reserve and other critics worry that the companies' holdings are so large that they could pose a risk to the financial system.
The Justice Department apparently ended a criminal probe of Freddie's accounting transgressions without any prosecutions, the company said in September 2006.