No use crying over spilled execs? CushWake’s Donnelly, Ahrens leave after DTZ merger

Former DTZ senior VP, colleague leave for Colliers International

From left: Jeffrey Donnelly and Ulrike Ahrens
From left: Jeffrey Donnelly and Ulrike Ahrens

The mega-merger between Cushman & Wakefield and DTZ, which created one of the world’s largest commercial brokerages, is not all peaches and cream. Two DTZ executives have left the company to join Colliers International, just a week after the merger was finalized.

Jeffrey Donnelly, a senior vice president at DTZ, and colleague Ulrike Ahrens are joining Colliers’ New York office as an executive director and director, respectively. Donnelly joined DTZ in April 2011 and oversaw the firm’s real estate investment banking group.

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The departures are indicative of redundancies at the new Cushman & Wakefield, after the company completed a $2 billion merger with DTZ that will preserve the CushWake name. Ron Lo Russo, president of Cushman & Wakefield’s New York Tri-State Region, is helming the combined firm’s New York office.

The new entity will employ 43,000 people in total, according to the New York Observer, and also includes employees from DTZ’s acquisition of brokerage Cassidy Turley late last year. The Cassidy Turley deal also saw redundancies play out in the workforce, with DTZ laying off 45 employees nationwide after the acquisition and as many as nine in New York. [NYO]Rey Mashayekhi