NEW YORK CITY—In a significant step in expanding its real estate platform, Annaly Capital Management Inc. has scooped up a team of senior professionals from GE Capital Management. This comes just weeks after GE Capital announced it would be selling its commercial and consumer businesses, which are valued at $23 billion, to Blackstone and Wells Fargo over the next two years.

The five-member GE Capital Real Estate team is headed by Jeffery J. Thompson, who has over 20 years of experience in commercial real estate. Most recently, Thompson served as the managing director of the Strategic Capital Group at GE Capital Real Estate. Thompson will join Annaly's team along with four members of his Real Estate team from GE, according to a prepared release by Annaly earlier this week. Thompson will assume the position of Co-Head of Annaly's commercial real estate platform along with Annaly executives Michael Quinn and Robert Restrick.

 In a prepared statement, Annaly's Chief Executive Officer. Wellington Denahan, said, “We are excited to welcome such a seasoned team of commercial real estate investors with the addition of Jeff and his group.”

Along with Thompson, Patrick T. Maroney, Daniel J. Jagoe, Neetika Gandhi and Clive A. Brown Jr. will be joining Annaly's team.  All four members of Thompson's team have held executive positions at GE and have years of experience in the industry.

At GE, Thompson was charged with heading up GE Capital Real Estate's commercial real estate direct lending balance sheet program with a focus on institutional sponsors, operating partners and brokers across the U.S.

Maroney who will serve as a managing director in Annaly's commercial real estate group, was previously a senior director at GE. With GE for 15 years, he handled originating, credit risk assessment, underwriting, structuring, negotiating and closing loans across the firm's structured and CMBS lending platforms.

Jogoe will take on the role of managing director in Annaly's commercial real estate group. At GE, Jogoe was the senior asset manager where he led GE Capital Real Estate's commercial real estate loan, joint venture and REO portfolio.

Gandhi will assume the role as director in Annaly's commercial real estate group. During her time at GE Capital Real Estate, she was vice president—underwriting/risk management. Previously to her time at GE, Gandhi served as vice president in Goldman Sachs' Real Estate Investment Banking division.

Brown Jr. was an underwriting leader at GE Capital Real Estate where he controlled execution efforts on large commercial portfolio transactions across all product types. At Annaly, he will also take on the position of director for the real estate group.

According to Annaly president Kevin Keyes, the move is expected to tremendously aid the firm's growing real estate platform. The addition of the team, which has over 80 years of experience combined, “broadens our institutional origination platform and strengthens our strategy to grow this aspect of our business,” he states.