With the rumor mill working double time due to the concurrent mega melding of CBRE and Insignia, the merger within the merger couldn't be kept quiet any longer. "When your agents are asking you everyday what's going on, at some point you have to acknowledge it," BT President Mike Kamm told GlobeSt.com last week from Hawaii, where he was vacationing with his family.

Ironically, that "some point" turned out to be less than a week before the mini merger turned to mush. Kamm says it was due to "business points that were not resolvable" but adds that the situation was "partly exacerbated" by CBRE's ongoing merger with Insignia. "Trying to merge three companies in a single market did raise extra complications," he acknowledged.

Ultimately, less than one week after saying the CBRE-BT merger would "create a level of service and coverage that no other firm in the market could match," Kamm says both parties agreed that it was not in either party's best interest to move forward at this time and that there were no plans to resume talks.