Eli Global’s mini-mortgage empire includes lender/servicer Castle & Cooke, wholesaler Western Bancorp, Prime Mortgage and a warehouse lending division called CapLoc…

Over the past two years, insurance conglomerate Eli Global has been quietly vetting mortgage companies for purchase, occasionally striking deals while appearing hungry for more. But now, the company is taking a major pause after news broke that Founder and Chairman Greg Lindberg will be the subject of federal grand jury testimony in Charlotte, NC, next week.

Meanwhile, the largest potential deals looming over the market continue to be Ditech Financial and loanDepot…

As press time, Lindberg’s spokesman, Chuck Norman of S&A Communications, had not returned several emails and telephone calls regarding the subpoenas.

One fact that all dealmakers can agree on is that MSR pricing is the best it’s been all decade…

Ditech’s most coveted asset is its $181.4 billion mortgage servicing portfolio...

But there’s a catch: the portfolio has a delinquency rate of 11.5 percent and foreclosures of 1.5 percent.

Highbridge Capital Management, New York, this week disclosed a 9.79 percent stake in the troubled Ditech Financial, a once bankrupt servicing giant whose future continues to be an open question.

A spokeswoman for bemortgage said the lender’s staff will be kept in place…

Roughly 86 percent of the mortgages are purchase-money loans...