NEW YORK CITY-Cushman & Wakefield said Wednesday that five of its top office leasing brokers, who had joined C&W with former CEO Bruce Mosler, have parted ways with the firm. A company spokesman tells GlobeSt.com that Matthew Astrachan, Alexander Chudnoff, Paul Glickman, Mitchell Konsker and Mitti Liebersohn have severed ties effective immediately; an industry source confirms that the group has moved over to Jones Lang LaSalle.

In a statement, C&W says the departure of the team led by Konsker “follows several months of discussions with the group about the direction of the firm,” about which “we were unable to reach agreement.” According to the statement, “We wish them well in their future endeavors.”

Mosler brought the five brokers, who have ranked among the city’s most prolific leasing professionals, with him when he came aboard at C&W from the Galbreath Co. in March 1997. Mosler continues at C&W as chairman of global brokerage.

“Fortunately, through the company’s relationship with many of New York’s largest property owners, we expect to maintain the highest level of service to our existing clients and to aggressively pursue new landlord agency business, according to the C&W statement. The company says it has “one of the industry’s premier platforms on a global scale and a competitive compensation model that we believe continues to position us well to aggressively recruit to our platform as we grow and enhance our services to clients.”

This past May, GlobeSt.com reported that a C&W investment sales team of Richard Baxter, Jon Caplan, Ron Cohen and Scott Latham left the firm to lead the New York City capital markets team at JLL. Frank Liantonio, C&W EVP, told GlobeSt.com at the time that “we’re not happy that they left, but with transaction volume in the city off 93% last year, we’re clearly not surprised.”