More JLL brokers depart as HFF teams move in

Mo Beler joined JLL in 2017 to right the ship after top sales team departed

Mo Beler and Anthony Ledesma (Credit: LinkedIn)
Mo Beler and Anthony Ledesma (Credit: LinkedIn)

More of JLL’s legacy investment-sales brokers are out amid a struggle for power after the company acquired HFF earlier this summer for $2 billion.

Mo Beler, who for the past two years served as head of JLL’s i-sales division in New York City, and Anthony Ledesma, both recently left JLL.

Beler left to “pursue another opportunity,” he wrote in an email sent out to associates Wednesday evening. Ledesma landed at Hodges Ward Elliott, the company announced on Tuesday.

Beler previously worked at the private real estate investment firm Rockwood Capital and at the Innovo Group before joining JLL in 2017 to lead its capital markets group, which was lagging after the company’s top sales team of Richard Baxter, Yoron Cohen and Scott Latham left for Colliers International the year earlier.

He managed a team that included Ledesma, Glenn Tolchin and Yoav Oeslner.

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Beler and Ledesma are the latest departures from JLL as the brokerage teams at HFF stake their claims in the firm.

After JLL finalized its purchase of HFF in July, there was overlap with brokers who would once compete against each other for the same business. The HFF sales team led by Andrew Scandalios and the debt-brokerage team helmed by Michael Gigliotti appears to have muscled out JLL’s top producers.

A representative for JLL did not respond to a request for comment.

Last month Aaron Appel, the former head of JLL’s debt arm, left with team members Keith Kurland, Jonathan Schwartz and Adam Schwartz to launch their own firm. In April, Oelsner left the firm.