Ethan Penner

Ethan Penner is the Founder and Managing Partner of MREC Management, LLC. He is a recognized pioneer in the field of real estate finance with a 35-year career marked by filling voids and responding to unseen or poorly understood opportunities. Over his career he has been involved in $30B+ of mortgage originations. Most notably, he is credited with being the primary driver in the creation of the Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities market while at Nomura Securities, for which he received broad recognition including being named one of the U.S. Real Estate Industry’s 100 icons of the 20th century. In 2011, Real Estate Forum voted him one of the Real Estate Industry’s 65 living legends in their 65th anniversary issue. In 2008, Ethan founded and served as President of CBRE Capital Partners, a real estate debt investment platform that successfully raised and managed over $600M from institutional and high net worth investors. CBRE Capital Partners substantially exited all investments in 2014. Ethan currently serves as an adjunct professor at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, and previously held the same capacity at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. He earned a Bachelors of Arts Degree from New York University.