To achieve this goal, JLL strives to find key transaction players who adhere to its culture of collaboration as the best measure for gaining market share. "There's been an incredible shift in the caliber and depth of the people we have on board," Koster continues. "These are big moves and we'll continue hiring. The key is to add people who are skilled and knowledgeable, who are strong dealmakers and have a tremendous sense of team and appreciation for the firm and its culture. We're willing to help each other, and that's our competitive difference."

Koster contends that a business model that is both local and global is the only one to properly serve a truly global real estate investment market. JLL has achieved this in part through a series of acquisitions that have helped broaden its platform and offer services at all levels. The first of these domestic acquisitions took place in January 2011 with the purchase of certain assets of Atlanta-based Primary Capital Advisors, a commercial real estate lending and servicing group. This allows JLL to operate as a Freddie Mac Program Plus seller/servicer, along with a $2-billion loan-servicing platform that the firm will continue to expand nationally through additional correspondent and servicing relationships.

Next, in October 2011, came a merger with Pacific Real Estate Partners Inc., one of the Pacific Northwest's leading real estate services firms, which gave JLL a leading presence in that region. In December 2011, due to the PREP acquisition, the operation was able to close on and partially lease back 1800 Ninth Ave. in Seattle's CBD and South Lake Union submarket for Regence BlueShield, the biggest deal in Seattle last year. A joint venture of Talon Private Capital and Prudential purchased the 15-story, class-A property for $76.5 million, and Regence leased back 30% of the space.

Internationally, other key acquisitions took place for JLL, including a May 2011 merger with international property consultancy King Sturge, which thrust the combined firm into a leadership position in the UK and continental Europe. All 43 King Sturge offices across Europe, including 24 in the UK, now operate under the JLL brand, allowing integration of business lines and teams and a full rebranding of all business activities. Then, in August, the company acquired Procon, a firm dominant in the Indonesian real estate market, creating the largest real estate services company there, with more than 300 personnel. The firm's headquarters remain in Jakarta with additional offices in Bali and Surabaya.

Along with the acquisitions, JLL's capital markets growth has come from the hiring of key domestic personnel who fit in with the firm's culture, or "DNA," as Koster puts it. In response to growing demand for multifamily services along the West Coast, significant hires include David Young and Chris L. Smith in July 2009. Young, a 20-year industry specialist with significant multifamily experience, joined the team as a managing director in Seattle, while Smith, skilled in acquisition and disposition underwriting, took on the role of associate in Los Angeles.

In March 2010, the firm hired Thomas O. Fish, Michael J. Melody and Thomas J. Melody as executive managing directors to lead its Americas Real Estate Investment Banking business and assume executive leadership roles for the firm's Americas capital-markets business. The trio, based in Houston, has focused on expanding an REIB business that at the time of their hiring had a foothold in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City and Washington, DC, with an emphasis on helping to create a fully integrated investment sales and REIB business across the Americas.

Later that month, JLL hired Al Cissel and Scott Melnick away from Transwestern. The managing directors, operating from the firm's Maryland office, lead JLL's Mid-Atlantic multifamily investment sales business and are helping to grow the firm's multifamily capital markets presence aggressively throughout the Mid-Atlantic region. The duo partners with Jubeen Vaghefi, managing director and leader of the firm's national multifamily investment sales practice; Koster; and Mike Ellis, Mid-Atlantic market director, along with the Mid-Atlantic capital markets and REIB teams.

In May 2010, the firm continued its hiring blitz by adding industry veterans Richard Baxter, Jon Caplan, Ron Cohen and Scott Latham to lead its New York City capital markets business. The foursome, recognized as one of the most successful and highly regarded teams in New York, represent more than a century of combined real estate capital markets experience and an investment sales transaction track record exceeding $20 billion in the previous 10 years alone. Their areas of focus include investment sales, debt placement, recapitalization, note sales and placement of rescue capital and joint venture equity capital. That expansion was followed in March 2011 by the addition of key players from the number-one and-two ranked multifamily brokerage teams in Atlanta—Derrick Bloom and David Gutting.

The two joined JLL as managing directors, along with SVP Vince Lefler and VP Porter Jones, to strengthen the firm's capital-markets platform in the Southeast and along the East Coast, as well as its eastern multifamily client-service offerings. And in April of this year JLL hired Frank Petz to lead its New England activities. Petz, one of the region's longstanding market experts, focuses on debt finance, equity placement and investment sales.

"We're recruiting top talent to increase the market-share proposition in all product lines across the US," Koster explains. "The characteristics we look for in talent include being top tier in what they do and being strong team players with a cultural fit. Most important is that they're skilled and knowledgeable and work effectively with others to provide leverage" with their teammates around the world.

While the spate of hiring and acquisitions has provided JLL with extraordinary bench strength, one marvels at how the firm pursued a counterintuitive strategy to invest in the capital markets business in the middle of a downturn, in order to position itself strongly for the recovery. COO and CFO Lauralee Martin describes how that strategy is focused on capturing the leading share of global capital flows for the investment sales and debt and equity business, reinforcing that the US is a highpriority investment area for the firm.

"Many competitors, in an effort to survive, took their eye off their people in a way they perhaps shouldn't have," she says. "The big market makers didn't have much business going on, so they could pause and look to where they could be most effective. While others were hunkering down and laying off, we more than doubled the number of people in our organization. We knew we'd have the best people as the markets came back."

Considering the above-mentioned revenue gains, the recessionary positioning has been paying off. So has Martin's experience in banking. "Market recoveries are a lot longer than people think, and you end up having deep and lasting relationships with others you help through to recovery," she says.

Moving back to the global realm, Arthur de Haast, chairman of JLL's global hotels business and lead director of its international capital group, stresses the importance of understanding capital, moving quickly on deals and anticipating where in the world investor interest is emerging. "Institutional investors need to diversify and acquire different kinds of assets that may not be available in their local markets, so they start to look offshore," he says. "We work closely with regional and local capital markets teams to understand which of those investors are interested in going offshore and the assets they're looking for. With our strong local presence, we can connect international and offshore capital with the right partners."

The next frontier for the CMG is the US. The group admittedly has some work to do to be the number one or number two domestic player, and JLL is committed to achieving that goal. De Haast says that the US market is driven largely by domestic capital, but around 25% of it is offshore capital, and a large chunk of that is concentrated on specific asset types and classes. Martin adds that JLL is gunning for nothing less than leadership in the US, and the fundamentals seem to be in JLL's favor.

Following a more challenging second half of 2011, Martin and de Haast say some confidence seems to be returning to the US investment market on the back of improving economic indicators, with Americas volumes projected to grow modestly by 10% to There's also been a recent trend of capital coming out of Asia and going into both Europe and the US—a trend that can help strengthen JLL's position in the US market even further.

"For a lot of these offshore investors, doing deals in the US is relatively new, so they need help," says de Haast. "It's a question of being aware of their particular needs. Each one of them has a specific way of doing business, and it's critical to understand this in order to get a deal done."