NEW YORK–The Newmark Group has announced it is acquiring RKF Retail Holdings, a real estate firm that specializes in retail leasing, investment sales and consulting services. The acquisition of the New York-based company, which is expected to close before the end of the year, will augment Newmark's own national retail business, which includes retail leasing, retail investment sales, project development retail leasing, retail occupier services and Excess Space Retail Services, a specialist in real estate disposition and lease restructuring.
A 20-year old company, RKF has offices in Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Northern New Jersey, San Francisco, Toronto and Tokyo. Robert K. Futterman will serve as chairman of Newmark RKF, which is what the new retail leasing division will be called.
“This acquisition is consistent with Newmark's goal to add top talent in all disciplines and is an important step in continuing to build the leading retail platform in both leasing as well as retail investment sales,” Barry M. Gosin, CEO of Newmark, said in a prepared statement.
The Season Of The Deal
Newmark's acquisition follows numerous other proposed and closed mergers and acquisitions in the commercial real estate space. Besides the mega-deals occurring with REITs, with many being taken private, brokers as well are consolidating.
Colliers International, for example, has made some recent acquisitions including an agreement to take a 75% stake in Harrison Street Real Estate Capital for a total of $550 million. It also just announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Engel & Völkers Main -Taunus GmbH in Frankfurt, Germany.
As another example, earlier this month Marcus & Millichap announced it entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Pinnacle Financial Group, a Cleveland, Ohio-based commercial real estate mortgage brokerage and servicing firm.
“Companies are looking for deal flow so they are making acquisitions,” Shahab Moreh, the head of the real estate practice group at the accounting firm Mazars USA, told GlobeSt.com recently in a general discussion about the M&A occurring in the industry. “The acquiring company has the capital and the other company has the deal flow. Combined, the two make for a strong real estate company.”
This is a trajectory that the broker community has been on for years, Greg Leisch, senior managing director of Market Research for Newmark Knight Frank, told GlobeSt.com in a recent interview, also speaking generally about M&A. “Over the last fifteen years, for example, there has been a massive consolidation of service providers. “JLL didn't exist. Cushman & Wakefield was a completely different company or companies. So many service providers have disappeared or been swallowed up. The need for growth and scale has been the reason,” Leisch says. Indeed, Newmark itself is the sum of a series of acquisitions.
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Erika Morphy
Erika Morphy has been writing about commercial real estate at GlobeSt.com for more than ten years, covering the capital markets, the Mid-Atlantic region and national topics. She's a nerd so favorite examples of the former include accounting standards, Basel III and what Congress is brewing.
