NEW YORK CITY—This past Friday, Bloomberg Business reported that Jonathan Pollack left Deutsche Bank AG, where he was global head of commercial real estate and head of risk for structured finance. On Monday, Pollack's whereabouts became clear: he had joined the Blackstone Group as a senior managing director.

For his new employer, Pollack will serve as CIO for Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies, a platform launched in 2008 that now has more than $8.6 billion in assets under management. He'll report to Michael Nash, who had held the CIO title within BREDS and continues as its global head; Nash is also executive chairman of Blackstone Mortgage Trust.

“Our real estate debt business has grown dramatically in the past few years, in size, scope and geography,” says Nash. The company manages nearly $10 billion of investor capital through BXMT, its private mezzanine debt funds and its CMBS investing platforms. That was even before Blackstone's $14-billion share of GE Capital's commercial mortgage platform, which Nash says “has scaled the business even further. We feel quite fortunate that we can attract a great talent and industry leader like Jonathan. Looking forward, Jonathan's talents and experience will help accelerate and enhance our growth, as we become one of the pre-eminent real-estate finance firms in the world.”

To hear Pollack tell it, Blackstone is already “the leading real estate investor in the world today in almost every sector. I see terrific opportunities here, and I am looking forward to working with the team.”

Pollack joined Deutsche Bank in 1999, and became head of the financial services giant's CMBS platform in 2011. He helped build that platform into the US and global leader in securities backed by commercial properties, Bloomberg reported.

Blackstone's hiring of a high-ranking commercial real estate finance leader is only the latest in an especially busy year for the asset management giant's CRE platform. Along with acquiring much of the GE Capital Real Estate Platform, it has also acquired Excel Trust and set a new high watermark for fundraising, closing the institutional portion of its Blackstone Real Estate Partners VIII at $14.5 billion.