Blackstone Group, the world’s largest real estate private equity firm, is continuing to grow its executive ranks with the hiring of Jonathan Pollack from Deutsche Bank to serve as chief investment officer of its property debt unit.
Pollack was at Deutsche Bank for sixteen years and most recently served as head of its commercial real estate division, according to Bloomberg News. He will report to Michael Nash, Blackstone’s real estate debt strategies chief.
Pollack “is in our opinion one of the bright, bright lights in our industry,” Nash said. “He has a lot of overlap with many of the businesses we’ve done on the private lending side.” Pollack was in charge of Deutsche Bank’s commercial mortgage-backed securities unit, the largest in the industry of its kind.
Blackstone’s debt unit includes CMBS investing, the publicly traded Blackstone Mortgage Trust, and mezzanine-debt funds.
Earlier this year, Blackstone and Wells Fargo paid $23 billion to acquire most of General Electric’s real estate assets. In March, it raised $14.5 billion for a new real estate fund. [Bloomberg News] — Tess Hofmann