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Greg Schementi Speaks with BisNow on M&A Activity Among Brokerage Firms

Newmark's CEO On Why The Brokerage Mega-Merger Is Dead For Now

The age of the blockbuster merger of commercial real estate brokerage giants could be at an end for the foreseeable future.

Newmark and Cushman & Wakefield were briefly rumored to be discussing a merger earlier this year, and JLL was whispered around the industry as a potential C&W buyer in 2020.

But Newmark CEO Barry Gosin threw cold water on any smoldering embers of merger talk on his company's recent earnings call when an analyst asked him if he thinks there is a "strong rationale for large-scale M&A" among the large publicly traded brokerage firms.

"No, I don't," Gosin said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript. “I think the enormity of friction and the conflicts and the coverage and the crowded nature makes it very difficult for large companies to merge. There has to be a perfect synergy and fit. And there's a point of no return or indifference makes it really, really hard to do.”

“If you just break it down CBRE, JLL, Cushman, then drop off to Newmark, Colliers, Savills. I think we’re getting to a point at least in that population that value is ruined when firms are consolidated,” Cresa President Greg Schementi said. “If CB and JLL get together in a city, they’re going to lose brokers. A lot of broken glass. If you merge two firms with 100 brokers each in a market, it’s not 200 happy brokers.”

This article originally appeared on BisNow. See it in it's entirety here.