Michael Lafitte, president of the Dallas-based institutional and corporate services for Los Angeles-headquartered CBRE, has provided details for the quartet of deals, adding the recent signings boosted year-to-date tallies to 14 renewals and expansions and 24 new corporate accounts. The latest round has bed down a renewal from San Francisco-based McKesson Corp., expansion from Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank and new pacts from London-based Diageo and Chrysler Realty Co. LLC of Detroit.

"We have had constant activity on the renewal front and expansion front," Lafitte says. "The merger of Trammell Crow Co. was largely about this outsourcing space."

Lafitte tells GlobeSt.com that McKesson, a Fortune 20 company, courted its contract to the market before re-upping for another five years for transaction management, portfolio administration and program and project management for 17.1 million sf at 270 locations. The package covers the headquarters, sales and marketing offices, call centers and distribution centers. CBRE also has the facilities management contract for 51 locations, totaling 4.5 million sf, and select facility services for another 2.5 million sf.

The first McKesson contract produced 250 transactions and 120 projects, including nine major build-to-suits. Lafitte heads up the account, with his team consisting of Lynn Kious, area executive account leader; Tim Schroeder, alliance director; and 90 other CBRE professionals in the US and Canada.

Fifth Third Bank had CBRE doing transaction management and lease administration for 11.5 million sf, but not facilities and project management. "The combined organization has a much deeper platform and we were able to convince Fifth Third Bank to let us do facilities and project management," Lafitte confides.

Presently ranked as the 12th largest bank in the US, Fifth Third plans to add 400 locations in three years in the US. The account is headed up by CBRE senior vice president Edward Schreyer, senior director Dawn Spillane and Ken Loeber and Bret Nave in the brokerage house's project management group.

Diageo, a holding company for some of the biggest names in the beer and liquor industry, has put CBRE in charge of 20 sites with 500,000 sf of office and warehouse buildings in the US and Canada. Previously, Diageo had several providers standing watch over the facilities. The new pact spans facility, transaction and project management functions as well as portfolio administration. The CBRE team will be led by Benjamin Chirgwin, managing director and alliance director of a 17-member team for the account.

Chrysler has signed a three-year lease for transaction management, lease administration and valuation services for its dealership portfolio. Its team will be led by Jeff DeSano as alliance director with assistance from James Angelotti, Gregg Shutan, Andrew Hallissey, Alex Darragh, Fran Saele and Michael Gerard. Kent Alexander, executive account leader for CBRE's global corporate services business in the Midwest, says he's "confident" that the team's approach "will generate significant value for Chrysler."

The global corporate services group represents 9,000 of the 26,000 professionals in the combined CBRE-TCC hierarchy. In last week's earnings call, CBRE leaders reported global corporate services accounted for 23% of the $1.5 billion of third-quarter revenue. Pre-merger, CBRE's outsourcing was 14% of its Q3 2006 revenue.

The global outsourcing group is responsible for 300 accounts, with more on the way. "It's a good pipeline. We feel very good about the prospects of this business," Lafitte says.

With today's escalating costs, more companies are poring over areas to save on the bottom line. In doing so, Lafitte says there is a trend for companies to consolidate outsourcing contracts while trying to expand their bases. "Corporate portfolios have been pretty stable, but there could be some pause with what's going on in the market," he explains. "But, they're definitely consolidating the number of providers that they're using."