CHICAGO—As reported yesterday in GlobeSt.com, Studley, a New York-based real estate firm, will complete a merger with London-based Savills plc by the end of May and adopt the name Savills Studley. And Studley officials in its Chicago office, which has about 30 brokers, say the move could bring them major corporate clients eager to take advantage of their new cross-border capabilities.
“It will give us the opportunity to seek business with great companies that over the years we've elected not to pursue,” John Goodman, the head of the Chicago office, tells GlobeSt.com. Studley specializes in tenant representation, “and our platform has been growing, but it's thin on the international side,” a gap that a global firm like Savills can fill. And joining up with Savills means Studley will also gain a facilities management capability, another potential lure for clients.
“We've resisted building a facilities management platform, maybe because we felt it was too big of a hill for us to climb on our own,” he says. But many Fortune 250 companies really need that piece, as well as the international breadth that Studley has lacked up until now.
“I can't divulge any specific names or deals,” Goodman adds. However, “there are easily 50 opportunities where we have not responded to an RFP because we did not think we had the necessary capabilities,” but that could have been in reach with the tools that come with the new merger.
“Many companies, especially those in the Fortune 250, have realigned their real estate processes and taken a more international approach,” Goodman says. In the past, most had a separate US real estate group, along with one for Europe and one for Asia. “But over the last ten years, more companies have centralized real estate decisions,” creating the need for a cross-border provider.
Still, he adds, “we were not feeling an immense pressure to act immediately. This has been a relatively quiet merger that has been in the works for awhile. We've had a lot of folks knock on our door over the past few years about a possible merger and we've been cautious about finding the right partner.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
