Wells Fargo Financial sells auto unit to Atlanta company

<p>Wells Fargo Financial officials say the company will sell an auto loan unit to an Atlanta-based credit card company.</p><p>Terms of the agreement between Des Moines-based Wells Fargo Financial and CompuCredit Corp. were not disclosed.</p><p>The sale of the Consumer Auto Receivables unit is expected to close in the first quarter of 2005.</p><p>As of last month, the unit had about $133 million in assets.</p><p>Headquartered in Lake Mary, Fla., the unit operates in 40 states through 12 branches, three regional processing centers and a national collection center.</p><p>"This is an exciting opportunity for our group to grow ...," said Richard Potter, president of Consumer Auto Receivables.</p><p>CompuCredit, a credit card company that currently serves more than two million customers nationwide, has agreed to acquire most of Consumer Auto Receivables assets and business operations.</p><p>It also will hire most of the unit's 270 employees, according to a news release from Wells Fargo Financial, a subsidiary of Wells Fargo & Co.</p><p>Officials said Wells Fargo Financial will remain one of the premier non-prime automobile lenders in North America through its Philadelphia-based Wells Fargo Financial Acceptance business unit.</p><p>That unit, which has about 580,000 customers, has more than $8 billion in receivables.</p><p>"This sale represents less than 2 percent of our overall auto-lending receivables and allows us to focus on our core auto-lending businesses," said Tom Shippee, Wells Fargo Financial president and chief executive officer.</p><p>Wells Fargo Financial is a $34 billion company providing installment and home equity loans, automobile financing, consumer and private-label credit cards and other commercial services.</p><p>The company has about 18,250 employees and operates in 48 states, Canada and the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands.</p><p>____</p><p>On the Net:</p><p>HASH(0x2864dc8)</p><p>HASH(0x2864e70)</p>