Blend Network appoints lending director

Blend Network, the specialist development finance lender, has announced the appointment of seasoned property and finance expert Chris Mason as Lending Director in its growing lending team.

The arrival of Chris, who will be based in Cambridgeshire, will help Blenddeploy a large pool of funding recently committed by several family offices and a group of prominent investors.

The appointment will also help Blend expand its fast-growing regional footprint. The news comes at an exciting time for the business and follows Blend’s recent completion of an equity funding round led by several notable family offices and experienced investors who also committed funding to deploy across the UK residential market, and Blend’s recent launch of a new 75% LTGDV high-gearing product.

Chris has over 40 years of experience in banking and finance across both high street and specialist finance providers.

His most recent position was as Relationship Director at Assetz Capital where he focused on providing specialist development finance to residential and commercial schemes across the UK.

Previously, Chris was a corporate account manager with Handelsbanken where he worked on large-size deals of up to £100m including commercial mortgages, commercial property development, residential development facilities, syndicated facilities and trade finance.

Chris’ multi-decade real estate and banking career includes roles within the property development lending teams at Bank of Scotland and Barclays.

Yann Murciano, CEO, Blend Network, commented:

“We are delighted to welcome such an experienced property finance professional as Chris to our growing senior lending team.

Chris has a breadth and depth of experience across the real estate and finance sectors, as well as extensive regional expertise, which will significantly help us scale our loan book.

Furthermore, Chris’ mindset tightly aligns with ours at Blend Network in that we want to do the deal. Chris’ appointment will help us expand our broker community and ultimately deploy our abundant cash.”

Chris Mason, Director, Blend Network, commented:

“I am very pleased to be joining Blend Network at such an exciting time. The company has already gained recognition as one of the most solid and trustworthy specialist development finance lenders.

Its business model, strategy, flexible and safe source of capital, and risk appetite offer experience property developers flexible, secured funding.

I believe the company has a great future and I look forward to playing a strong role in its expansion and success.

Even after 40 years in the industry, I remain hungry to do business with clients both old and new”.