Matt Petrula (left) and Peter D'Arcy.
Matt Petrula and Peter D’Arcy
Senior Group Manager, Commercial Real Estate; Head of Commercial Real Estate and New York Area Executive at M&T Bank
Last year's rank: 23
M&T Bank consistently stands out as one of the most prominent regional bank lenders in the country, always maintaining a prevalent position along the East Coast.
In 2019, the bank’s commercial real estate operation originated $16 billion — $11 billion in balance sheet loans and $5 billion in agency multifamily originations.
This year, so far, has been headlined by the all-hands-on-deck work M&T put in for the PPP lending program, in which it supplied $7 billion across more than 30,000 applications, saving 765,503 jobs for those borrowers suffering from COVID-19 who received funds from the bank.
“We pulled 2,000 employees from all different areas of the bank,” Petrula said. “We had an SBA group that’s a couple hundred people, but we threw all the resources we could at it. People were up nights and weekends underwriting loans at 3 a.m.; it felt good to be part of that. In five days we did what we did over the last couple years combined.”
COVID-19 support aside, M&T finished 2019 on a strong note with a couple standout transactions. It provided a $276.1 million construction package near the end of last year to Related Companies, Altria and Spitzer Enterprises for a mixed-use apartment and senior living project in Hudson Yards at 451 10th Avenue. And its largest deal last year was a $460 million loan for a luxury rental apartment building in Brooklyn being built by the Brodsky Organization.
The pandemic stalling out the investment sales market caused the bank’s pipeline to naturally slow this year as its customers took a “wait-and-see approach,” Petrula said. But he added that business has started to pick back up, the bank is doing more refinances and its agency business has also been strong in the first half of this year.
“[A lot of this] has to do with interest rates having gone so low,” Petrula said. “We’re seeing more and more customers looking for 10-year money or longer, which is a sweet spot for agencies. And in the life-company platform we started a few years ago, we’re seeing more demand recently. It’s a great time [to lock in long-term debt]; the surety of putting something to bed for the long term resonates with a lot of people.”
M&T, a Buffalo-based bank whose main stomping ground is the New York Tri-state area, is very bullish on New York in the long term, despite the numerous hits the city has taken in the first half of this year, Petrula said. Like many others on this list who have experienced ups and downs in the city, Petrula counts on the historic resilience it exhibits in times of stress.—M.B.
