Italian Investors Close on C&W Majority Stake

NEW YORK CITY-Italian investment trust Ifil has closed on its planned takeover of a majority stake in Cushman & Wakefield. The trust will take a 71.5% chunk of C&W for $625 million in cash. Even before the deal closed, Ifil’s war chest was hefty with some 7 billion euros of investments that include Italian carmaker Fiat. The deal, originally anticipated to close in January, was caught up in the European approvals process, sources state. The remaining ownership percentage is held by company employees.

As GlobeSt.com reported in mid-December—ahead of C&W’s own press conference on the pending deal–the New York City-based services firm was planning to shed its longtime Japanese majority stakeholder—Mitsubishi Estate Co. Mitsubishi is actually a majority stakeholder in the New York City-based Rockefeller Group, which in turn was the majority stakeholder in C&W. Although the brokerage is no longer part of Rockefeller, it still possesses four other operating companies: a development firm, a technology company, Rockefeller Group Business Centers and Commonwealth Partners.