That's Angelo Mozilo, chairman and CEO of Calabasas-based Countrywide Financial, and the question has been batted around since the nation's largest mortgage lender unexpectedly announced that its president, Stanford Kurland, had left. He will be replaced by David Sambol, who had been in the No. 3 spot.

No one is explaining the turn of events (Countrywide announced the change in a press release that went out Thursday at midnight). Some had considered Kurland to be the heir apparent to Mozilo - and Wall Street was nudging the well-coiffed Mozilo to finalize succession plans. Perhaps Kurland was pushing Mozilo, too (recent scuttlebutt had Mozilo becoming non-excecutive chairman, Kurland running the shop and Sambol being second in command).

Mozilo is one of those larger than life guys. He co-founded Countrywide with David Loeb in 1969 (it was called Countrywide Funding). Over time, the company rode the wave of a financial services industry that was becoming less constrictive and allowing businesses like Countrywide to offer more products. By the late 1990s, Countrywide began paying more attention to new homeowners, not just folks looking to refinance. Anyway, it's huge business - last year revenues were $10 billion.

For the last couple of years, Mozilo has indicated that he wanted to step down CEO when he turns 68, which happens Dec. 16. About a year ago, a NYT profile put it this way:

He has recruited others with chips on their own shoulders to carry on at Countrywide after he leaves, and has set them loose on the staid banking industry with something to prove. His top two lieutenants graduated from California State University, Northridge, a decidedly un-Ivy League institution not far from here. Another comes from California State University, Long Beach. All told, the company now employs more than 50,000 people.

Around that time, this is what he told National Mortgage News: "I don't want to die in the office." His father, who was a butcher, died at 56 - and Mozilo remembers being devastated. "I worshipped my father," he told the publication, pledging that he will be spending more time with family. The article mentioned both Kurland and Sambol as heir apparents.

OK. But during a trip to India this spring, he told India's Economic Times that he has no intention of retiring. Here's how that publication put it:

Ask him why he has not stepped down like many of his contemporaries; and pat comes a query, “You think I am doing bad?” We think not. He was, after all, voted as one of the 30 most respected CEOs around the world in 2005 by Barron’s. And Mozilo has no plans to retire yet.

There's been little retirement talk at the company as of late and frankly, it's hard to see the little guy stepping down at such a relatively young age. Look at all the shenanigans Sumner Redstone is pulling in his 80s. Maybe Mozilo has been engaging in a little pushback, and maybe Kurland, who joined Countrywide in 1979, figured that the old man wasn't ready to call it a day. Or maybe Mozilo has just decided that Sambol is his guy. We just don't know. And Countrywide is a notoriously opaque company, especially when it comes to how Mozilo runs the show. We might learn a little more at an investor presentation on Tuesday.