Super-brokers Doug Harmon and Adam Spies have jumped from Cushman & Wakefield to rival Newmark, in the biggest talent shake-up since the commercial market slowdown.
The duo will be co-heads of Newmark’s U.S. capital markets business, the Wall Street Journal first reported. They will be joining Kevin Shannon and Robert Griffin, who already hold the same title.
Their departure leaves a void at Cushman during a time when rising interest rates have slowed commercial sales.
The team has been involved in more than $250 billion worth of deals since 1997, including $5.7 billion in deals last year. Harmon and Spies brokered two of the 10 priciest investment sales of 2022, according to The Real Deal’s analysis of single-property investment sales.
The team handled GO Partners’ $837 million purchase of the American Copper Buildings in Murray Hill and CBRE’s $332 million purchase of a logistics center in Red Hook. Other notable transactions in recent years have included Google’s $2.4 billion purchase of the Chelsea Market building and Blackstone’s $5.4 billion deal at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.
Cushman ranked fourth last year among investment-sales brokerages representing commercial property sellers with $43.3 billion in transactions, according to Real Estate Alert, with Newmark closely behind, doing $42.5 billion in deals.
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In 2016, Harmon and Spies turned the commercial brokerage world on its head by moving to Cushman from Eastdil Secured.
Harmon and Spies’ five-year contract with Cushman was due to expire in October 2021. The team reiterated its commitment to the company at the time of negotiations, which people familiar told TRD centered on the brokers’ commission split with the firm.
— Holden Walter-Warner