NEW YORK CITY-Finance veteran Michael Mazzei has left Bank of America Merrill Lynch to take the reins as president of Ladder Capital Finance Holdings LLLP, the company unveiled Friday morning. In his new role, Mazzei has been tapped to expand the firm’s asset management business and continue to develop its securitization platform.

With a track record of reducing virtually all of BofA's legacy CMBS assets and re-starting the CMBS 2.0 business, chief executive officer of Ladder Brian Harris describes Mazzei "a peer and a partner," noting that the company “will benefit greatly from his experience and deep product knowledge.”

Mazzei, who previously served as managing director and global head of the CMBS and bank loan syndications groups at BofA, has more than 25 years of experience in commercial real estate and capital markets. Prior to that, he developed the commercial real estate finance group for Barclays Capital from the ground up. Earlier, he had worked at Lehman Brothers, where he began with the company’s mortgage trading operation at its inception in 1986, rising to the head of CMBS and subsequently co-head of its real estate investment banking unit.