Patellis, who has over 19 years of experience in senior management with Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, C-BASS and Washington Mutual, has been hired to develop more introducer relationships.
Duncan Kreeger, chairman of West One Loans, said: “George has an unrivalled track record in the industry. With his wealth of knowledge and experience George will be able to unlock doors for us in the packager and distribution world that no one else can.
"He combines entrepreneurial flair and negotiation skills with a deep knowledge of the market. He’ll be an invaluable asset."
West One said its loan book has grown rapidly over the past 12 months and plans to expand by expanding its broker relationships.
Since 2006 Patellis has taken up various consulting roles including a spell advising the Regulatory Alliance of Mortgage Packers and two years working as chief executive officer at a start up lender in Australia.
He was appointed chief executive officer at Tiuta in 2009 working there until 2011.
Previously he had worked as operations director at Preferred for eight years before taking the managing director role in 2004.
During his time as managing director with Preferred Patellis helped increase monthly volumes from £250,000 to over £125m.
Patellis, head of strategy at West One Loans, said: “The West One set-up is genuinely entrepreneurial. We have a motivated and ambitious group of people here who want to take the business to the next level.
"The daily buzz in the office is invigorating – the energy of the company is there for all to see. I’m looking forward to the challenge of developing new relationships and improving the distribution side of the business.
"With so many new entrants in the market competition is fierce. Hopefully my experience and business development skills will give West One an extra edge.”
Yesterday Tiuta International, the holding firm for Connaught Asset Management’s £100m series one bridging loan fund, was put into administration.
The former subsidiary of UK bridging provider Tiuta held assets written by Tiuta using Connaught's income fund series one - which Connaught announced it was winding down last month.
The series two fund’s holding firm was Tiuta Development Finance which is as yet unaffected.
Mike Davies, chairman of Connaught Asset Management, said: “Following the acquisition of Tiuta International by Connaught Asset Management the directors decided to place Tiuta International into administration in order to secure the orderly wind-down of the loan book and to ensure Connaught is being as transparent as possible during this process.
"This decision has nothing to do with the wider Tiuta plc group. We have opted for this as Connaught has never handled any investor monies and we have no intention of doing so now.
"Between the acquisition of Titua International and placing it into an administrative process all bank accounts have effectively been frozen with no monies leaving its bank account.
"The independent administrator will be responsible for all money within bank accounts and investors will be able to see that any monies transferred around will be done so transparently.
"Connaught's objective has been to effectively appoint an independent custodian to manage the wind down of the loan book and our decision to opt for administration protects investors and Connaught and clearly demonstrates that we have no other intention but to recover as much money as possible for investors in an open and transparent manner.”
BDO has been appointed administrator. It declined to comment.
