STRATMOR Group evolved from its predecessor firm, MEBAC, which was founded in 1981 by our co-founders Jeff Babcock and Bob Meceda. MEBAC's purpose was to assist lenders in private placements of whole loan packages with institutional investors and developing niche mortgage products. By the mid-80's, however, these functions had largely been taken over by Wall Street firms. And, as Wall Street developed and perfected mortgage securitization, MEBAC migrated towards a specialization in mortgage industry merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions.
To reflect this new business direction, we changed our name from MEBAC to the Strategic Mortgage Finance Company (STRATMOR Group). And over the next eight years, we participated in dozens of industry M&A transactions, most of which involved front-end proactive acquisition searches on behalf of buyers. STRATMOR Group was, in fact, instrumental in a large number of the transactions that consolidated many independent mortgage bankers into today's top 25 lenders.
In early 1988 we decided to add strategic and operational consulting to our M&A services. Because of our successful and growing transaction experience, we were establishing a solid reputation for industry knowledge, superior quantitative skills, integrity, and accountability. Consequently, most of our early-on strategic consulting engagements were follow-on assignments with M&A clients who wished to leverage our in-depth understanding of the specific businesses acquired.
An important advance for our firm took place in 1998 when we partnered with the Mortgage Bankers Association to develop and implement the MBA/STRATMOR Peer Group Roundtables Benchmarking Program. This industry-leading program provides participating firms – which today includes most of the industry's larger lenders – with comprehensive performance data, performance analysis and semi-annual meetings at which senior executives of participating firms can discuss performance results and other issues with their peers at other companies.
The MBA/STRATMOR Peer Group Program greatly accelerated the growth and development of our consulting practice. In particular, our exclusive access to company performance data enabled us both to broaden the range of our consulting services and enhance existing practice specialties. We also benefited from the large amount of "face-time" we had with senior lender executives at the program's semi-annual review meetings and the relationships and respect that grew out of such regular contact. Perhaps most importantly, without any significant marketing effort on our part, the Peer Group Program enabled STRATMOR Group to become a widely-recognized, trusted and respected consulting brand.