Newmark Knight Frank lured away the top hotel-sales team from Eastdil Secured to build up its capital markets group.
The move is Newmark’s biggest poach since it went public last year. And for Eastdil, it’s the company’s biggest loss of talent since the star team headed by Doug Harmon and Adam Spies left for Cushman in late 2016.
Newmark hired Eastdil managing directors Adam Etra, Mark Schoenholtz, Lawrence Wolfe and Miles Spencer, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The brokers were in charge of Eastdil’s hospitality division for the eastern half of the U.S., and were responsible for deals such as Anbang Insurance Group’s purchase of the Waldorf Astoria in 2015 for $1.95 billion. The team just brokered the closing of Capstone Equities and Highgate’s $190 million purchase of the W hotel on Lexington Avenue, now known as the Maxwell.
Newmark CEO Barry Gosin said the company’s pipeline “is pretty full in terms of acquisitions.”
“We’re aggressive in pursuit of growth,” he said.
Currently, Newmark has an investment-sales team that includes company president Jimmy Kuhn and brokers David Colen, David Noonan, Jennifer Schwartzman and David Behin.
The team is marketing the seven-property Jack Parker portfolio, which is said to be worth $1.5 billion, and an eight-acre site on the Long Island City waterfront that could fetch $480 million. [WSJ] – Rich Bockmann