Owens Corning has elected Michael J. DeVito to its board of directors, expanding the board from nine members to ten. The building products manufacturer announced the election on 16 September 2026, effective the same day.
DeVito joins the Audit Committee and the Finance and Technology Committee. He spent roughly a quarter of a century at Wells Fargo, leaving as executive vice president and head of home lending, before serving as chief executive of Freddie Mac from 2021 until 2024. He joined the board of the homebuilder NVR in July 2025 and has been a trustee of Simpson College since 2014.
The logic of the appointment is housing. Owens Corning sells roofing, insulation and composites, and the single largest determinant of its volumes is how many American homes get built and re roofed. Its board has historically been weighted towards industrial operators and distribution. DeVito brings the other side of that equation, having run the balance sheet that finances the houses rather than the plants that supply them.
That matters more than usual at present. Mortgage rates have held high enough for long enough that existing homeowners have little incentive to move, which suppresses turnover and with it the renovation spending that follows a sale. A director who ran the largest bank channel in American home lending and then led one of the two government sponsored enterprises that sit behind the mortgage market has an unusually direct read on when that log jam breaks.
There is also a governance dimension. Freddie Mac operates under conservatorship and the scrutiny that comes with it, and a chief executive who has worked inside that structure arrives fluent in regulatory reporting in a way few industrial directors are.
Owens Corning has been reshaping itself since acquiring the doors business of Masonite, a move that pushed it further into residential building products and away from its composites heritage. Enlarging the board rather than replacing a departing director suggests the company is adding capability it did not previously have, rather than filling a gap.
The company did not name a retiring director alongside the election.
The two committees he joins reflect that reading. Audit is the conventional seat for a former chief executive with a finance background, but the Finance and Technology Committee is where a building products manufacturer decides how much balance sheet to commit to capacity and to the digital tools its distributors increasingly expect.
Owens Corning does not break out a single housing starts sensitivity, but roofing is the larger part of its North American business and roofing demand is driven by storm activity and re roofing cycles as much as by new construction. That gives the company a partial hedge against the slowdown in transactions, and a director who can read which of the two forces is moving in a given quarter is useful to the board rather than merely decorative.
