CHICAGO—The Chicago-based company RR Donnelley & Sons has sold off its Global Real Estate Services group to Atlanta-based Covius, LLC, a real estate advisory firm that provides data and analytics, risk management, and other services. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but officials say the new company will maintain its offices in Atlanta, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.
It's just the latest of many changes and combinations that GRES has undergone over the years. In 2006, RR Donnelley acquired the group, then known as OfficeTiger Global Real Estate Services. It was created in 2005 when Office Tiger, a professional support services firm, acquired Atlanta-based MortgageRamp, a technology startup that developed an online commercial origination platform. In 2001, MortgageRamp had acquired Salt Lake City-based FASRE Field Services, one of the nation's largest providers of annual property inspections to the commercial mortgage servicing industry. And in 2002, it had also acquired Univest Financial Services, LLC, which offered underwriting, due diligence and securitization support for commercial real estate, among other services.
Keith Gettmann, the managing director of RR Donnelley's Global Real Estate Services, will serve as a senior managing director of Covius. Doyle Spears, the senior managing director of sales for commercial and residential services at GRES, will also serve as senior managing director of Covius.
Furthermore, the newly formed company has chosen Edward Feighan of Columbus, OH as its new CEO and Joseph Little as its president. Feighan was a US congressman representing an Ohio district from 1983 to 1993 and later served as the CEO of ProCentury Corp. a Westerville, Ohio-based insurance company. Little is the former CEO of Real View Capital where he helped build a residential mortgage acquisition platform.
"Through this transaction, we have the good fortune of acquiring an industry-leading real estate advisory services company with a superior management team, each having a minimum of 20 years of relevant experience," says Little. "The real estate market has experienced profound changes in the last few years. Our clients, now more than ever, continue to come back to us as a trusted source of intelligence to navigate the new and evolving landscape. This is where our experience and trust matter the most."
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
