Ares Commercial Real Estate Corp

We are externally managed and advised by our Manager pursuant to the Management Agreement. For details regarding payments under the Management Agreement, see “Certain Relationships and Related Transactions—Management Agreement.”

Each of our named executive officers is an employee of our Manager or one of its affiliates. We rely completely on our Manager to provide us with investment advisory services and our Manager manages our day to day operations. As highlighted in the table below, we do not provide cash compensation to any of our named executive officers or other officers.

Instead, we pay our Manager a base management fee and an incentive fee and we reimburse our Manager for our allocable share of the salaries and other compensation paid by the Manager or its affiliates to our (a) Chief Financial Officer, based on the percentage of his time spent on our affairs and (b) other corporate finance, tax, accounting, internal audit, legal, risk management, operations, compliance and other non‑investment professional personnel of our Manager or its affiliates who spend all or a portion of their time managing our affairs based on the percentage of their time spent on our affairs. We have reported the compensation that we reimburse to our Manager for our named executive officers in “Summary Compensation Table” set forth below.

Highlights of our Management Agreement and Compensation Structure• Base Management Fee—Our Manager receives a management fee equal to 1.5% of our stockholders’ equity, subject to certain adjustments, which is used, in part, to pay the compensation of our Manager’s employees, with no specific portion allocated to our named executive officers. For 2023, the management fees were approximately $11.9 million.• Incentive Fee—Our Manager is eligible for performance‑based fees if our Core Earnings (as defined in the Management Agreement) exceed certain thresholds set forth in the Management Agreement with our Manager. For fiscal year 2023, the incentive fee was approximately $0.3 million.• Role of our Named Executive Officers—All of our named executive officers are employees of our Manager or one of its affiliates and are engaged in additional capacities for our Manager and its affiliates. Our Manager is responsible for the compensation of our named executive officers and other employees of our Manager who support the services our Manager provides to us. We do not determine the compensation payable by our Manager to our Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer or the other personnel described above. See “Compensation of our Named Executive Officers by Ares Management” below.