Howard Lutnick

BGC Partners plans to roll out its real estate derivative platform next year with the backing of three large banks, the firm’s CEO Howard Lutnick said at a real estate panel this morning in Midtown.

BGC owns the Midtown-based real estate brokerage Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, and Lutnick first suggested in 2011 that the company would offer a hedge against office leases in the form of a derivative.

Real estate derivates provide tenants or landlords a type of insurance against rising or falling rents, but have proven difficult to implement. Many real estate brokers are skeptical about the idea, but other industry insiders believe it will eventually take hold. [more]

BGC CEO Howard Lutnick

Newmark Grubb Knight Frank raked in $141.1 million in revenue during the third quarter. The third quarter earnings mark a slight decrease from the $144.1 million posted during the second quarter, according to a report in Crain’s. The results come from a tally recorded by its parent company BGC Partners. Newmark’s earnings raised BGC’s income during a time at which BGC’s income from other financial services had fallen.

BGC’s revenues were $107 million in October – a decline from $112 million in October of 2011. But including real estate revenues, the numbers during the third quarter ticked in at $440 million, up from roughly $380 million year-over-year. [more]

From left: Avison Young's Mark Rose and BCG's Howard Lutnick.

BGC Partners has filed suit alleging that Avison Young, a Toronto-based commercial real estate brokerage, has “illegally looted” business from its recently acquired Grubb & Ellis subsidiary. Avison Young, led by former Grubb & Ellis president Mark Rose, allegedly poached 16 brokers in New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Pittsburgh, according to the complaint, after Grubb & Ellis filed for bankruptcy in February, the suit claims.

Filed Aug. 1 in New York State Supreme Court, the suit alleges that Avison Young poached the South Carolina and Nevada affiliate brokerages from Grubb & Ellis after the BGC acquisition was completed in April. Avison Young has rewarded these brokers, “with full knowledge and recklessness to the consequences-for concealing or stealing business opportunities that belonged to Grubb & Ellis,” the suit states. [more]

BGC Partners CEO Howard LutnickBGC Partners CEO Howard Lutnick appeared on Bloomberg Television yesterday and shared his vision for the company’s commercial real estate business on the heels of recent acquisitions of Newmark Knight Frank and Grubb & Ellis (see video after the jump).

Lutnick said his financial brokerage can thrive in the commercial property market because the biggest users of offices are the very financial services firms with which BGC already has an established relationship. “We figured we could buy companies, hire great brokers and use those relationships we have to grow our marketshare.”… [more]

From left: Arthur Mirante of Avison, Joseph Harbert of Colliers International and Howard Lutnick of BGC Partners

In the midst of several Cushman & Wakefield defections to commercial brokerages setting up shop here in New York, the market is beginning to look more competitive, Crain’s reported. The trend is a product of firms pursuing deals in New York City, where the real estate market remains far more active than it is in much of the rest of the country. [more]

From left: Mort Zuckerman, Susan Breitenbach, Aby Rosen and Billy Macklowe

From Apollo Global Management head Leon Black to Boston Properties boss Mort Zuckerman, the New York City real estate industry is a critical component to the East End scene. In fact, no fewer than 14 of the 100 most powerful people to descend upon the Hamptons this summer, as compiled by Hamptons magazine, are members of the industry. [more]

The vast majority of the real estate professionals and nearly all the transactional brokers that were working in the Manhattan office of commercial real estate firm Grubb & Ellis in the months before BGC Partners merged it into Newmark Grubb Knight Frank have not gone to Newmark, an analysis by The Real Deal shows (see chart). [more]

Howard Lutnick

A Manhattan federal bankruptcy judge this morning issued a ruling approving BGC Partners’ acquisition of troubled California-based real estate brokerage Grubb & Ellis, free and clear of any liens.

The ruling is a victory for BGC, headed by CEO Howard Lutnick, which had come under criticism from Grubb brokers who objected to several details of the bankruptcy proposal, including a plan to pay many commissions through loans. [more]

BGC Partners CEO Howard Lutnick

From the March issue: Howard Lutnick’s announcement last month that his firm BGC Partners would buy distressed brokerage Grubb & Ellis through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy moves the conversation from why he’s getting into the commercial real estate game to how big a company he wants to build.

The purchase announcement came four months after the financial brokerage bought real estate services firm Newmark Knight Frank, and just weeks after Lutnick boasted on Bloomberg Television that he hoped to someday capture “25 percent of the [commercial real estate] market share.” [more]

From left: Howard Lutnick, CEO of BCG Partners, and Scott Markowitz of Tarter Krinsky & Drogin

A federal bankruptcy court judge in Manhattan responded yesterday to a group of creditors frustrated over the speed of the potential BGC Partners acquisition of Grubb & Ellis, and postponed a hearing scheduled for today until next Monday, court records show.

The creditors complain that Howard Lutnick’s Midtown-based brokerage BGC Partners is forcing through a sale of nearly all of Grubb & Ellis’ assets at an accelerated pace so that BGC will be the sole bidder. [more]