Brian Brooks, who once led the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, has been named CEO of commercial mortgage broker Meridian Capital Group.
Brooks will replace Meridian co-founder Ralph Herzka, who will transition to the role of senior chairman.
Brooks, most recently a partner at law firm O’Melveny & Myers, has held several jobs since his 2020-21 OCC stint, according to his LinkedIn profile. That includes three months as Binance.US CEO, a year at the helm of blockchain firm Bitfury, and three years as a senior adviser to Valor Capital Group.
In a statement on his new role at Meridian, Brooks said he sees “great potential to revitalize the broker model and enhance the core engine of the firm while investing in adjacent commercial real estate capabilities and strengths.”
Founded in 1991, Meridian said it’s brought more than $550 billion in CRE funding to more than 11,000 customers.
“As we look to institutionalize Meridian as a world-class company and further diversify our revenues, there is no better steward of our future than Brian,” Herzka said in a prepared statement. “He is an outstanding and recognized leader in financial services, and I am excited to work with him to build on our firm’s foundation of unparalleled experience and market intelligence.
“We are positioned well to stand tall and thrive in the service of our stakeholders as the real estate market and regulatory environment evolve,” Herzka added.
Earlier in his career, Brooks was vice chairman at CIT Bank predecessor OneWest Bank, and he spent 18 months between 2018 and 2020 as Coinbase’s chief legal officer.
Notable, too, is a three-plus year stint he spent at Fannie Mae as executive vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary. Fannie Mae and its brother organization Freddie Mac, two privately owned but federally funded organizations created by Congress to provide liquidity, stability and affordability to the mortgage market, blacklisted Meridian due to an ongoing investigation in November.
Brooks told Bloomberg he will focus on rebuilding Meridian’s relationship with the government-backed enterprises by setting up proper compliance and risk infrastructure over the next 12 to 18 months.
“Obviously we need to reset that relationship and we need to build a risk infrastructure at Meridian that meets Freddie Mac’s expectations — that’s job one,” he told Bloomberg. “We’ll be engaging on day one with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the [Federal Housing Finance Agency] to talk about ways we can improve the risk culture and ways that we can improve compliance to give them confidence.”
His plan puts him at Meridian for potentially longer than his stints at the OCC and Binance.US combined.
During his time at Binance.US, Brooks gave testimony amid the SEC investigation that indicated one of the reasons for his short time there: “What became clear to me at a certain point was CZ was the CEO of BAM Trading, not me.”
BAM Trading operates as Binance.US; and Brooks was referring to Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance. The SEC alleged in June that Zhao secretly controlled Binance.US’s operations despite assertions that it was separate and independent.
Zhao has since pleaded guilty to anti-money laundering law violations and had stepped down from Binance. He awaits sentencing.
