Matt O’Brien.
Matt O’Brien, 28
Vice president of real estate capital markets at Wells Fargo
Matt O’Brien spent most of his life in California, but that hasn’t stopped him from working on financing for some of New York’s most iconic properties.
Born in Los Angeles, O’Brien studied finance at the University of Notre Dame and interned at Wells Fargo (WFC), where he said he learned the ins and outs of the CMBS business. He was invited to come back to Wells Fargo full-time in L.A. when he graduated.
“I quickly fell in love with the business,” he said, “It’s the marriage of more traditional finance markets with commercial real estate, which drives how we live and how we work. It’s a cool intersection.”
In 2017, he was presented with the opportunity to join Wells Fargo’s large loan banking team in New York, which focuses on deals for the bank’s largest, most institutional clients.
“It was a great opportunity to work in the center of the commercial real estate universe,” he said.
During his first year in New York, O’Brien worked on the $2.3 billion financing of the GM Building for Boston Properties, where Wells Fargo was joint bookrunner, as well as the $500 million financing of 330 Madison Avenue for Vornado Realty Trust, where the bank was sole bookrunner.
“It was a support role, but it was a great introduction to what it’s all about,” he said.
More recently, he worked to close $403 million of acquisition financing for Elliot Management’s acquisition of the JW Marriott Desert Ridge from Blackstone, and provided another $275 million of CMBS financing to refinance and recapitalize Elliott’s existing stake in another asset in its portfolio.
“It was a very competitive bidding process that we ended up winning,” O’Brien said. “Getting that second Sheraton deal with Elliot was a testament to the service that we provided them. It was definitely a career highlight.”
O’Brien has racked up more than 120 transactions with $16 billion of total volume, over $10 billion of which Wells Fargo directly funded.
“These are big numbers,” he said. “Much bigger than I thought I would be doing starting out in the business.”
