Freddie Mac’s recently departed CEO is now heading up a new agency-lending platform backed by Meridian Capital Group and the investment firm Barings.
David Brickman, who stepped down from the quasi-government agency this month, will take the lead at the yet-unnamed platform, Bloomberg News reported.
“We have a significant opportunity to create one of the leading lenders in the multifamily commercial real estate space,” Brickman told the publication. “The combination of low interest rates and what is hopefully going to be a degree of recovery and stabilization in 2021 with the vaccine and additional stimulus should result in a strong year with more than $300 billion in total origination.”
The new platform is expected to lean on Meridian’s vast reach with borrowers. The brokerage originated almost $40 million in commercial real estate loans in 2020, more than $25 billion of which was multifamily debt.
Meridian president Yoni Goodman said more than a third of that was done through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The new platform is acquiring the assets and liabilities of Barings Multifamily Capital LLC. The deal requires approval from federal government-sponsored entities, or GSEs.
Multifamily loan purchases by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are capped at $70 billion this year.
Brickman had been at Freddie Mac since 1999. He notified the board in November that he planned to leave. He will be an executive chairman at Meridian and a senior adviser at Stone Point Capital, which acquired a minority stake in Meridian.
[Bloomberg] — Rich Bockmann