Chad DeMartino - Founder & CEO
With more than 15 years’ experience in real estate finance and restructuring and having held positions in investment banking, equity research and compliance, Chad founded The Mroz Group with the goal of offering his unique vantage point and skillset to the real estate finance community.
Having been chosen as a senior finance professional to work out and restructure the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy real estate portfolio, the largest real estate workout in history, Chad is one of a select group of executives with extensive experience in structuring, implementing and managing strategies to create or recapture value for complex real estate assets. His expertise spans all property types (multifamily, industrial, retail, hospitality, land, office, etc.), capital asset types (debt, equity, etc.) and deal structures (joint venture, ground lease, foreclosures, REO, etc.). During his time at Lehman Brothers, he resolved more than 300 debt and equity positions and oversaw the disposition of approximately 10,000 multifamily units, 1,000 condominiums and several hotels and office buildings. Chad supervised a team of seasoned professionals and was an integral member of the management of the team.
Following his tenure at Lehman Brothers, Chad joined the Kroenke family where he leveraged his management and problem-solving skills to set up a family office and to oversee the family’s initiatives and projects, including new business investments and ventures, major donations, trusts and estates matters, and capital improvements to some of their properties.
Most recently, Chad was a principal at Square Mile Capital where he actively managed approximately $1 billion in equity investments on behalf of the firm’s funds and co-investors.
Early Career – Learning the Basics and Fundamentals of Finance
Chad began his career at Horizon Asset Management where he helped write two institutional equity research reports, The IPO Value Monitor and The Spin-Off Report, which offered equity investment recommendations to buy-side clients. At Horizon, he learned the fundamentals of equity analysis and money management.
Chad later moved on to UBS Warburg’s healthcare investment banking group where he worked on mergers and acquisitions, as well as public and private offering transactions. At UBS Warburg, he honed his financial analysis and modeling skills, focusing on providing investment banking services to healthcare companies across all sectors (medical devices, biotechnology, healthcare services, etc.) and sizes (small-cap, mid-cap, and large-cap).
After completing his law degree, in August 2001, he re-joined his healthcare investment banking team that moved over from UBS to Lehman Brothers. Following September 11th, he transferred into healthcare equity research where he focused on covering the Life Science Enabling Tools Sector.
As one who always had an interest in real estate, Chad decided to transition into real estate finance. Given his experience in both investment banking and equity research, his law degree and good standing with the firm, Lehman encouraged him to continue working while obtaining his Masters Degree from New York University in real estate finance. During this period, he created the new set of procedures that were required to be implemented to regulate communications between investment banking and equity research. Recognizing that there were few people within the firm that had experience in both equity research and investment banking, as well as having a law degree, Chad was tasked with rolling out the new policies and procedures.
Upon completion of his Masters Degree in Real Estate in 2004, Chad transitioned into Lehman’s real estate finance group, where he joined the conduit lending group focusing on originating and underwriting loans that were to be securitized. He then was offered the opportunity to join Lehman’s Principal Transactions Group, where he evaluated, structured, underwrote and closed billions of dollars of debt (senior, mezzanine, fixed, floating) and equity real estate transactions across all property types throughout the United States and Central America. In 2008, he was selected to join the restructuring team and was promoted to Senior Vice President.
Education
Chad holds Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, from Columbia College of Columbia University, where he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa society. He also received his Juris Doctorate from Georgetown University, where he was a member of The Georgetown Immigration Law Journal, as well as a Masters of Science with distinction in real estate finance from New York University. Most recently, he earned a certificate in blockchain essentials from Cornell University’s eCornell program.
Why The Mroz Group?
Mroz is the last name of Chad’s maternal grandparents. He chose to use their name as recognition of the outstanding contribution they made to the person he is today.