Property Week, in Britain, is reporting Jones Lang LaSalle and Staubach Co. are on the verge of announcing a merger. The deal has been rumored for several weeks. The new report indicates the sale price for Staubach would be at least $735 million.
The deal has lots of interesting implications. It bolsters Jones Lang LaSalle's tenant rep business. In addition, both firms recently have been building outsourcing platforms aimed at the retailers, which we detailed in May.
In buying Staubach, JLL would buy a firm that specialises in advising occupiers – or as the Americans term it, ‘tenant rep' – at a time when fees from investment deals are drying up, particularly in Europe and the US.JLL is thought to have bid previously on rival tenant rep specialist Trammell Crow, before losing out to CB Richard Ellis, which bought the firm for $2.2bn (£1.12bn) in October 2006.
Staubach is significantly smaller than Trammell Crow was, but will still provide JLL with an annual revenue of around $450m (£229m) from its 1,600 employees across 70 offices throughout North America. JLL's annual revenue stands at $2.7bn (£1.37bn). In 2007, the firm's Americas contingent had more than 10,000 staff across 54 offices, generating an annual revenue of $765.2m (£386m).
A sale would mark the end of Staubach's eight-year-old partnership with DTZ. The alliance, struck in January 2000, created an advisory function for both sides, offering clients access to 12,000 property professionals worldwide. But in the last two years, DTZ has expanded its business in the US and Canada both organically and through corporate purchases, and now has 600 staff across 28 offices.