Robert Knakal is chairman of capital markets at the global brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. He was the co-founder and chairman of Massey Knakal Realty Services, the biggest investment-sales brokerage in New York City in number of deals, until Cushman acquired the firm in late 2014 for approximately $100 million. Knakal has personally traded more than 1,300 buildings and sites in New York worth $9 billion, including some of the biggest apartment-building portfolio sales in the citys history.

Knakal founded his firm with Paul Massey Jr. in 1988, after the pair worked together for several years in the Manhattan offices of Coldwell Banker Commercial. The original concept was to specialize in properties smaller than 100,000 square feet, though Massey Knakal has often reached beyond that. The firm, which also focuses on the New York metropolitan area and exclusively represents sellers, included more than 150 employees in four offices as of spring 2014.

Knakal, a New Jersey native born in 1963, graduated from the Wharton School of Business in 1984. He is one of the most oft-quoted experts on the New York investment-sales market, and writes regularly about it for the Commercial Observer.