Avison Young hires CBRE top producers

Avison Young, flush with a $250 million capital injection, continues to poach talent from its New York City rivals.

The Canadian firm hired office-leasing brokers Keith Caggiano and Roshan Shah from CBRE to help fill its growing ranks, Crain’s reported.

Caggiano and Shah recently represented Apollo Global Management in its 200,000-square-foot renewal at the high-priced 9 West 57th Street.

The pair their decision to jump ship for Avison was due, in part, to the $250 million investment Canadian Pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec made in the brokerage over the summer.

“It’s a combination of it being the right firm and the right time,” Shah said. “It’s very rare that you have one of the largest pension funds investing $250 million into a real estate company that is relatively new to the New York market. We’re coming in at the perfect time to take it to the next level and grow it.”

Shah said he and Caggiano reached a point at CBRE other brokers’ existing relationships made it difficult to do business. At the up-and-coming Avison Young, though, they will have more room to compete for clients.

Joe Harbert, whom Avison hired recently from Colliers International to mange its Northeast division, said Shah and Caggiano were consistently in the top 10 percent of producers at CBRE.

“Roshan is a superb broker who focuses on representing tenants, while Keith is very accomplished at representing landlords,” he said. “These are multimillion-dollar guys who are already senior and still young enough to have many years of production ahead of them.”

It’s been a busy year for Avison Young, which opened its first office in New York in 2012. Earlier this year the company hired investment-sales broker James Nelson from Cushman & Wakefield. [Crain’s] – Rich Bockmann