In Brief: Crestar Buys $612M Of GE Equity Credits

Crestar Bank announced Tuesday that it had bought more than $600 million of home equity loans and credit lines from GE Capital Corp.

The Richmond, Va., bank bought $440 million of home equity lines of credit and $172 million of closed-end loans from the Raleigh, N.C., finance company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition is consistent with Crestar's goal of expanding its portfolio of high-quality consumer loans, said William V. Bunting, group executive vice president in charge of the bank's consumer finance unit, in a prepared statement.

Crestar's portfolio of home equity lines of credit will total $1.2 billion after the deal. It will have $359 million of closed-end loans.

The sale doesn't mean that GE Capital is leaving the home equity loan business, said a company spokesman. "We're strongly committed to the home equity business," he said, and will continue to seek growth for it.

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