Howard Lutnick
Manhattan-based financial brokerage BGC Partners, which bought Newmark Knight Frank’s American real estate brokerage division last year, chose not to acquire or provide financing to the ailing firm Grubb & Ellis last month, a document filed Grubb & Ellis with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today said. [more]
Howard Lutnick
Howard Lutnick’s BGC Partners, which bought Newmark & Companylast year for $63 million in cash plus additional stock, is in talks to invest in the struggling commercial brokerage firm Grubb & Ellis.
In a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Grubb & Ellis said that yesterday the firm entered into an exclusivity agreement which gives BGC until Jan. 31 to pursue “debt or equity financing and/or a strategic transaction with [Grubb & Ellis].” [more]
Financial brokerage BGC Partners, which agreed last month to acquire real
estate services firm Newmark Knight Frank, weighed buying other brokerages such as
Cushman & Wakefield and Studley instead, two industry sources said.
BGC executives suggested to leaders of each brokerage that the way to create
value out of an acquisition was to cut the brokers’ commission rates by a couple
of percentage points and more than make that up with payments in shares of
stock, the sources, with intimate knowledge of the proposals, said.
BGC made the pitch to those firms — and possibly others — about six months
ago, the insiders said. It was not known if that was the same proposal presented
to Newmark. [more]
A leading broker of financial products, BGC Partners, has agreed to purchase the Midtown-based commercial services firm Newmark, which in the United States is known as Newmark Knight Frank, the companies said in a statement. The price was not released.
The purchase involves about 425 brokers, and includes Newmark’s New York business and the company’s majority interest in more than 25 offices around the country as well as other affiliates, the statement said.
BGC, based in Midtown, is controlled by Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO, who is also chairman and CEO of financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald. TRD [more]
After weathering the residential real estate storm, banks will face a brutal battering of commercial loan losses, according to a group of financial industry insiders who spoke at the Reuters Global Finance Summit. Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, said that the overpricing of commercial properties led to a crisis in the market. “The commercial real estate business still has not been marked down. It’s not been marked to market,” Lutnick said. “The economy can’t, in my opinion, grow fast enough that the tenants are going to go out and start hiring and growing and building and take up all these rents at $60 a foot.” The consensus among the panel was that, as U.S. banks held $1.65 trillion in commercial real estate loans as of Nov. 4, they’ve done little to solve the problem, choosing instead to postpone the inevitable. “When you’re in the eye of the hurricane, it sure feels good until you look at the TV screen and then you say, ‘look, the hurricane is all around you,’” Lutnick said.
