Brett White, Executive Chair of Cushman & Wakefield and prior CEO of Discovery Land Company, discusses the evolution of today’s global giant real estate services platforms.

As the first of this month’s two part series on the real estate brokerage and services platforms, Brett tells the story of the growth and evolution of the giant real estate services platforms. Brett was at the helm of CBRE during its formative 2000-2012 period and then at Cushman & Wakefield as it built back up following the GFC.

We explore the drivers as well as the competitive advantages of both the globalization and full service nature of these firms in the competitive landscape, both from the perspective of clients as well as talent, with more focused services firms. Justin Wheeler, CEO of Berkadia, will be the second guest in the series, to explore this from the perspective of his more transactionally and sector focused firm.

A long term theme of Leading Voices has been the increasing sophistication and institutionalization of the real estate business, which until these conversations, we have focused on from the perspective of ownership platforms. These conversations tell the same story from the perspective of the services firms, which have moved light years from pure sales/transactional to relationship driven, full service, consultative businesses that, as do their clients, also respond to today's mandates of ES&G.

Resources:

• Discovery Land Company
• Cushman & Wakefield

Related Episodes:

• Mary Ann Tighe | CEO, New York Tri-State Region of CBRE

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