Merger Prompts Insignia's Top Local Exec to Jump Ship

PORTLAND-With Insignia/ESG merging into CB Richard Ellis, Insignia’s top local executive Steve Klein has left the company. Klein has not yet revealed his next move, but tells GlobeSt.com he will speak about it later this week, after the merger becomes official.

A few local brokers have speculated he might be opening up the new Portland office of the Seattle-based brokerage firm Kidder Mathews, which recently also unaffiliated with Insignia, partnering instead with Chicago-based GVA. Kidder Mathews President Jeff Lyon did not return a Tuesday phone call seeking comment on who will be heading up its new Portland office, scheduled to open before the end of the month.

Other brokers say he might be starting his own shop, and may be doing so with George Slevin, whom Klein brought over from Macadam Forbes in June 2002 to be Insignia’s first Portland-area industrial broker. Klein came to Insignia in January 2002 from Trammell Crow Commercial, where he was an executive vice president and principal responsible for developing projects and building the company’s brokerage services department.