Brian Olasov Receives 2024 Founders Award From CRE Finance Council
New York, NY – Carlton Fields’ Brian Olasov, executive director of financial services consulting, received the 2024 Founders Award from the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council (CREFC). This award is given each year to an industry professional who has demonstrated outstanding leadership, offered significant contributions to CREFC and the commercial real estate finance industry, and engaged in innovative and creative business practices that have successfully enhanced the commercial real estate market and improved debt liquidity to a key component of the U.S. economy.
“CREFC stands out among trade associations in terms of effort-in translating into results-out. The impact of CREFC on the overall commercial real estate finance industry has been profound and beneficial,” said Olasov in a CREFC press announcement. “Remembering the contributions of past Founders Award recipients and then receiving this recognition humbles me. I want to thank my lifelong friends in the industry and the CREFC board for naming me this year’s recipient.”
Added Lisa Pendergast, executive director of CREFC, in the same press announcement, “We want to thank Brian for his dedication to CREFC and our industry. For some three decades Brian has helped market participants understand some of the most complex aspects of the commercial real estate finance market. CREFC, and the greater CRE finance community, continue to benefit from Brian’s extensive knowledge of the market and his ongoing education of young commercial real estate professionals.”
Olasov has more than three decades of strategic business and capital market experience. He is sought out by industry professionals for his deep knowledge of commercial real estate finance topics such as valuation issues, commercial mortgage loan servicing, and banking and lending regulations. Qualified to testify as an expert in valuation, loan origination, and loan servicing issues in residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities litigation, Olasov has testified before the congressional oversight panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program on MBS and banks’ impact on real estate markets.
In the professional community, Olasov has served on a variety of boards and committees including the board of governors, executive committee, audit committee member, chair of the national policy committee, co-chair of the international committee, chair of the risk retention task force, and a founding member of the European chapter of CREFC; board of governors of the Commercial Mortgage Securitization Association, co-chair of the CMSA international committee, and CMSA European chapter founder; vice chairman of the Real Estate Capital Resources Association mortgage securitization committee; board member of the Real Estate Investment Advisors Council, editorial board member of Commercial Real Estate Finance World; and board member of the Trigild Advisory Council.
