Colliers To Refer NYC Business to Williams

NEW YORK CITY-When news came out Tuesday morning that Toronto-based FirstService Corp. was purchasing a 65% interest in New York City-based GVA Williams, it wasn’t completely clear how things might shake out–FirstService is the service platform of Colliers International, and there has been no announcement of a merger between Colliers Macaulay Nicolls, the largest member within the Colliers International affiliation, and GVA Williams, as was previously predicted.

A GVA Williams spokesman tells GlobeSt.com that for the most part, GVA Williams will be working with Colliers. “Williams will refer all out-going business to company-owned and affiliated Colliers International offices and other FirstService Partner companies,” the spokesman says. “FirstService company-owned offices will refer all business going into New York to Williams. We also expect that most Colliers International affiliated offices, will refer business going into New York to Williams.”

In August, Colliers Turley Martin Tucker formerly revealed that it, along with Colliers Pinkard and Cassidy & Pinkard Colliers were consolidating ownership structures into one holding company. Following the closing of this transaction, the new holding company would expand to include locally based Colliers ABR, and industry sources told GlobeSt.com at the time that it cemented Colliers ABR’s staying power. When anonymous industry sources were previously interviewed in the July story about Colliers International–which the four companies are members of–and GVA Williams, they said that Colliers ABR would be the main question mark in a potential merger deal. “GVA Williams does export a lot of corporate business, that is not Colliers ABR’s motivation,” one source said. “The way Colliers International works is that ABR is a franchisee and there is no ownership link, so it would stand on its own in New York.”