New York, NY – January 20, 2012 – (RealEstateRama) — Real estate finance veteran Matthew Cohen has joined Mesa West Capital as a Principal in the firm’s New York office, announced co-founder Mark Zytko.
Cohen comes to Mesa West after seven years at Natixis North America, a US subsidiary of a French Investment Bank. As a Managing Director of Natixis’ Real Estate Group, Cohen was responsible for debt distribution including whole loan sales, securitizations, syndications and subordinate debt. Previously he was a vice president with insurance company Genworth Financial in the firm’s Stamford, CT office where he sourced, underwrote, structured, and closed commercial real estate loans for the company’s portfolio. Cohen began his career at Assurant (formerly Fortis Advisors) in its New York office focusing on loan origination for the life company’s balance sheet.
Cohen earned a BS in Business Administration from the University of Michigan and an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business.
Cohen joins Mesa West Capital’s two-year-old-full-service New York office with Principal Raphael Fishbach to continue to expand its debt platform on the East Coast. Last year the office sourced and closed $400 million of the more than $1 billion of first mortgage loans originated and purchased by Mesa West in 2011.
At Mesa West, Cohen will focus on capital markets including the distribution, acquisition and structuring of commercial real estate loans and the management of Mesa West’s balance sheet.
The combination of Matt’s experience in the trenches originating and underwriting portfolio oriented commercial real estate loans and his capital markets experience in structuring and distribution makes him uniquely qualified to help us continue to grow our platform, said Zytko. Matt sits at the intersection of our asset-level underwriting approach to deploying capital for our pension fund investors and the vast opportunities to acquire and distribute attractive portions of the capital stack in today’s commercial real estate markets.
Mesa West Capital <http://mesawestcapital.com> is a privately held portfolio lender and one of the nation’s leading providers of non-recourse first mortgage debt for commercial real estate acquisitions, refinancings and recapitalizations.
Contact:
Bruce Beck (805) 777-7971; bruce (at) dbrpr (dot) com
