The Economist recently pointed out how private equity is gearing up for some serious financial sector investing, saying that 60 private equity funds that focus on financial services were set up in 2008 and 114 are in the works.

PennyMac, a firm founded by Stanford Kurland and backed by BlackRock and Highfields Capital, bought $558m of home loans from the FDIC. PennyMac was formed by Kurland after he left Countrywide to do exactly this—take bad loans off of the books of other institutions and do it at a deep discount. According to Bloomberg:

Yesterday Thornburg Mortgage announced, in a filing with the SEC, it will allow an investor to acquire up to $300 million worth of stock in the company’s offering of $1 billion of convertible debt. The purchaser would have to provide assurances that the ownership would not jeopardize the company’s REIT qualification. The news is a [...]