TORONTO—The Canadian brokerage services firm Avison Young has acquired the Calgary-based property management firm Peregrin. Continuing the firm's ongoing global expansion, the purchase adds 1 million square feet to Avison Young's property management portfolio and 12 employees to Avison Young's Calgary office.

“We had the opportunity to purchase Kevin Ogle's [Peregrin president and CEO] company and give us more heft in the property management side in the Western part of the country,” Mark Rose, chair and CEO of Avison Young, tells GlobeSt.com. “Honestly, this is what we do every day when we find folks that fit the culture of the company and add to the platform. We are going on approximately 40 acquisitions already, so this is just one more that is on strategy. Kevin had a great business, and he was in the West where we wanted to augment our resources. We were able to come to terms, close and bring Kevin in as a leader.”

Ogle, who will serve as a principal in the Calgary office at Avison Young, launched the company in 1995 to represent high-net-worth individuals, foreign and Canadian family trusts, and institutional, corporate, pension, endowment and sovereign fund clients. Their services included property, asset and project management as well as investment sales, leasing and mortgage financing services. Ogle will continue to direct property and asset management in his new role at Avison Young, which oversees the Alberta territory.

This acquisition is fits in perfectly with Avison Young's expansion goals. “We started this journey as an 11-office, 200-person Canadian company, and now it is a global 200-office company with over 1,700 people,” says Rose. “What we continue to do is to look at the strategy that has been put in place, which is to service the occupier and owner clients in major markets, secondary markets and tertiary markets throughout the world, and we will continue to be on an acquisition spree as well as heavy recruiting as we have done all along. This has been a 10-fold increase in five years, and we are just going to stay the course.” Although Rose did say that company has more acquisition plans underway, he did not have anything he could disclose at this time.

The firm is interested in making headway in all aspects of the business. Recently, the Los Angeles office made headlines when it tapped architecture firm Gensler to create an open floor plan in its Downtown office space. The firm also leased an additional 5,000 square feet, bringing its total square footage to 13,500 square feet.