New Cushman & Wakefield strengthens in San Diego

The new firm, which will go by the name Cushman & Wakefield, has approximately 300 employees in San Diego, with 175 coming from DTZ and about 115 from the original Cushman & Wakefield side. Of the 300, approximately 110 are brokers.

As the historic $2 billion merger of DTZ and Cushman & Wakefield strengthens the new firm globally, it also is proving to have a synergistic effect in San Diego with few redundancies in the business.

Though DTZ had a larger local presence, Cushman & Wakefield brings additional services to the new firm, such as a property tax services group and valuations and appraisals, said Dan Broderick, recently named Cushman & Wakefield's market leader for the Southwest, which includes Southern California and Phoenix.

"On the broker side it's interesting. Even though we both have a large presence in town, when you put them together, there's not a lot of overlap in the business," Broderick said. "Cushman had a very small industrial group, we [had] a huge industrial group. That will be very complementary. "They have a big tenant rep practice, we have a relatively small tenant rep practice, so that will be complementary. They have a medical practice; we don't. They have institutional apartments; we don't. They have a self-storage team; we don't."

"You kind of go through the list of producers and focus areas and they're either complementary of each other, or one didn't have it and the other one does," Broderick said.

Cushman & Wakefield now holds the No. 1 spot in market share in many sectors in San Diego, according to CoStar data provided by Broderick. Cushman & Wakefield and DTZ both handled about $2 billion in sales and leasing volume in 2014.

First announced in May, New York-based Cushman & Wakefield and Chicago-based DTZ closed their merger last week, creating one of the world's largest real estate services firms on par with JLL and CBRE, in a year that's on pace to set records in the real estate sector.

The new firm has a combined total of $5 billion in revenue and 43,000 employees, and the new Cushman & Wakefield holds more than 4.3 billion square feet under management and $191 billion in transaction value.

Cushman & Wakefield is now owned by a consortium led by TPG Capital, along with PAG and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.

This merger follows a series of acquisitions that Broderick has been involved in, most recently DTZ's acquisition of Cassidy Turley earlier this year. He previously led the firms Cassidy Turley San Diego and BRE through the sales and transitions to the national firm.

Broderick was previously president and CEO at Cassidy Turley San Diego / BRE Commercial, and then named regional managing principal at DTZ. Prior to that, Broderick worked for Eastdil Secured and for Burnham Real Estate, now Cushman & Wakefield.

"There have been a lot of acronyms and name changes over the years, but it's amazing how resilient our people have been," Broderick said. "Their adaptation to change has been remarkable. It's always nerve-wracking going through change in any organization, but our people have been very resilient and up to the challenge in all three mergers."

The new Cushman & Wakefield's combined 300 employees in San Diego met for the first time Wednesday afternoon at a post-merger mixer, and interacted with others in their service line and with those they previously considered friendly competitors.

Along with having people physically get together, Broderick plans to help the two firms build a new combined culture, unique to the new local Cushman & Wakefield.

"We're not going to be successful being our old cultures and bringing them together," Broderick said. "We need to create a new culture that is forward-thinking, that is client-centric, that is solution-oriented, and very nimble."

While the new firm is a large organization, Broderick pointed out that staying nimble is key to competing at the highest level.

Also in the works is consolidating the two firms' offices in the UTC area, which could take six to 12 months. Cushman & Wakefield moved into the La Jolla Commons office tower at 4747 Executive Drive in 2012, and DTZ's San Diego headquarters are located at 4350 La Jolla Village Drive.

Three offices in Carlsbad are already consolidating, with employees moving into the DTZ office at 1000 Aviara Parkway, 92011.

katie_thisdell@sdtranscript.com

#322847

Katie Thisdell

Daily Journal Staff Writer

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