Freddie Mac CFO Christian Lown resigns

Christian Lown, Freddie Mac’s executive vice president and chief financial officer, is leaving the company after four years in the post. This creates a second vacancy in the government-sponsored enterprises’ c-suite.

His decision was announced in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing posted on June 11. Lown notified the Freddie Mac board on June 5 of his intentions to leave the company, with the move effective on June 28.

“The company will begin the process of identifying a successor to Mr. Lown,” the two sentence filing said.

Freddie Mac was unable to comment beyond what was disclosed in the SEC 8-K.

Lown’s departure comes as Freddie Mac is also looking for a new chief executive. Michael DeVito retired on March 15 and Michael Hutchins, its president, is acting as the CEO on an interim basis.

The timing of the departure means that Freddie Mac will have a new voice on its next quarterly earnings call.

Lown is leaving Freddie Mac after almost exactly four years in the role, starting in the job on June 15, 2020. Prior to that, he held the same title at student loan servicer Navient Corp. 

From May 2006 through March 2017, Lown was at Morgan Stanley, where he was a managing director of the financial institutions group. He also worked at UBS as a vice president and Credit Suisse as an associate.

Lown is also a board member of Merscorp, a subsidiary of Intercontinental Exchange’s ICE Mortgage Technology.

No interim replacement for Lown has been named at this time. However, Donald Kish, who held the CFO position on an interim basis between James Mackey’s resignation in December 2019 and Lown’s hiring, is still Freddie Mac’s senior vice president, corporate controller and principal accounting officer.