NEW YORK CITY—CBRE has hired Sarah Pontius away from Brookfield Office Properties, according to the Wall Street Journal. A 10-year veteran of Brookfield, where she most recently served as VP of leasing, Pontius joins CBRE as SVP in the brokerage group.
At Brookfield, Pontius handled leasing and asset management of the company's 18 million-square-foot portfolio of high-end office buildings, including the Midtown towers and the Manhattan West development in the Hudson Yards District.
The move is a "natural extension into brokerage," Pontius tells GlobeSt.com. "At Brookfield, I spent about seven years in acquisitions and three in leasing and I loved it, it's where I see myself long-term. Brookfield is a wonderful company, it's one of the top landlords in New York and globally; I can't say enough about it. But when I thought about doing brokerage—representing tenants as well as landlords—I wanted to go to the top brokerage house."
That thinking was kicked off last year, she notes, when she represented CIBC, along with Brookfield, in a sub-lease for space owned by the banking firm at 300 Madison Ave. The Sumitomo Corp. of America is leasing the space.
Her career at Brookfield included work on merger and acquisition deals around the world, like the $9 billion purchase of Trizec Properties with the Blackstone Group in 2006. She relocated to London that same year to grow Brookfield's international holdings, the Journal reports.
"Her experience in leasing, asset management and acquisitions in Manhattan and internationally will lend enormous value to our clients' decision-making process," says Kyle Schoppmann, head of CBRE's occupier services for the New York Tri-state region. Brookfield declined to comment.
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Rayna Katz
Rayna Katz is a seasoned business journalist whose extensive experience includes coverage of the lodging sector, travel and the culinary space. She was most recently content director for a business-to-business publisher, overseeing four publications. While at Meeting News, a travel trade publication, she received a Best Reporting award for a story on meeting cancellations in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
