Azadian Group, a commercial lender headquartered in New York City, opened a full-time office in downtown Los Angeles to service existing clients in the western U.S. and to capitalize on opportunities in California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada and the surrounding areas.

“We are seeing an ever-increasing amount of business demand west of the Mississippi and we are very excited to establish a foothold in Los Angeles which will serve as a base of operations enabling us to expand in this important and dynamic region,” said Raffi Azadian, CEO of Azadian Group.

Essa Thiry will head up the company’s business development efforts out of Los Angeles. Thiry was most recently managing West Coast business development efforts for Hana Financial, a commercial lender based in New York and LA.

“We are thrilled to have Essa as part of our growing team, especially as we open our first West Coast office and start to focus on building out that territory,” Azadian said.

Founded in 2003, Azadian Group provides short-term financing to small and medium businesses including:

• Bridges to third-party financing, M&A or liquidity events
• Subordinated stretch pieces and over-advances in conjunction with senior institutional lenders
• Interim working capital to improve a business’ financial condition in preparation for bank/non-bank financing