“Adam and Doug don’t come cheap”: Newmark plans expansion after epic poach

Bringing in rainmakers Doug Harmon and Adam Spies from rival Cushman & Wakefield may have just been the beginning for Newmark.

CEO Barry Gosin said the brokerage plans to go into buying mode this year, targeting companies with reduced valuations in a slow commercial real estate market.

But even in a down market, how much does it cost to hire the country’s top brokers?

“Adam and Doug don’t come cheap,” Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Goldfarb commented on Newmark’s fourth-quarter earnings call Thursday morning.

“There’s a lot of mythology out there,” Gosin responded. “The money up front is not why people move. It just isn’t.”

Gosin indicated that his company didn’t offer any more than Cushman & Wakefield was already paying its top brokers. Instead, he said, they moved to be part of Newmark’s platform.

When Harmon and Spies left Eastdil Secured in 2016 — also in a down market — they were rumored to have gotten a big payday. But they said then that it was because Cushman offered more opportunities with its varied suite of businesses like office leasing.

The duo’s contract at Cushman expired in 2021. While negotiating a renewal at the time, Harmon told The Real Deal he was committed to the company, writing in an email that the “global platform, the people, the culture and the strength of the brand are all valued and appreciated by us.”

Newmark executives said they expect the capital markets landscape to remain chilled during the first half of this year and then pick up, by which time the Harmon and Spies team will be set to capitalize on the recovery.

The company also plans to pull back on its stock buyback program and use that money to expand by buying companies at discounted values.

When Harmon and Spies moved in 2016 they proved the rule that top brokers can transform a company, turning Cushman into a sales powerhouse at Eastdil’s expense. The sales brokers will work alongside Newmark’s top debt brokerage team led by Dustin Stolly and Jordan Roeschlaub.

Gosin said he expects the new hires will have more success at Newmark, where they will be co-heads of its capital markets business, a title shared by Los Angeles-based Kevin Shannon and Boston-based Robert Griffin.

“We make people better,” Gosin said. “We make people have higher production than where they were before.”