LOS ANGELES—Kevin Shannon has joined Newmark Grubb Knight Frank as West Coast president of the firm's capital markets group. Shannon is one of the premier investment sales brokers on the West Coast, and was formerly the vice chairman in the capital markets group at CBRE. He joins NGKF with his team of 14 other capital markets executives.

"I moved to NGKF because they made it clear that they will continue to aggressively build a best-in-class capital markets platform nationally. Rob Griffin was a huge addition on the East Coast but their progress in Southern California in the last two months has been remarkable," Shannon tells GlobeSt.com. "They hired Curtis Palmer who was one of CBRE's top two multifamily sales producers in Los Angeles. They also hired Pete Bethea, a top retail investment producer, formerly with Cushman & Wakefield, and they got 15 of the 16 team members from my Orange County and Los Angeles investment sales teams. These key hires drive strong capital markets growth across the country, not just in Southern California. NGKF had 202% year over year growth in property sales in Real Estate Alert's mid-year 2015 rankings, which was by far the top growth rate among the top six brokerages. NGKF has quickly become the number-two multifamily sales brokerage firm nationally. The ability to participate and lead this type of growth, and the fact that NGKF is much more nimble and entrepreneurial is really exciting."

Last year, Shannon led $6 billion in acquisitions at CBRE, and in his career, he has sold and marketed more than $46 million in transactions. Based in the firm's El Segundo office Shannon will continue to he will continue to manage deals throughout the region and to focus on institutional clients across asset classes. "I will be leading the Western United States NGKF capital markets group. My primary focus will still be on executing sales assignments for my clients along the west coast from Seattle to San Diego and as far east as Denver," says Shannon. "The NGKF platform will offer my clients superior direct foreign capital access. This is critical after the year-end FIRPTA legislative changes and more complex debt equity finance solutions, among other advantages.  Our strategy will include building a close collaborative group that utilizes our collective talents to best serve our client's interests. There will be no silos based on product type or geographic region."

In addition to Shannon, NGKF has augmented its capital markets group with 14 additional new hires, including 26-year veteran Ken White who joins as an executive managing director and Rob Hannan, who joins as senior managing director specializing in the sale of investment properties for institutional clients in Los Angeles and Seattle. With this steadfast team in place, Shannon once again has set some high goals. "My team's goal is to continually improve our best-in-class service standard for our clients," he adds. "We will be able to do that with our new NGKF platform. Customer first always has been critical to our success. Another goal is to augment NGKF's continued growth by helping to add top-performing like-minded real estate market professionals across the platform. It will be fun to watch NGKF's ambitious growth plans continue to make waves in the industry. Watch for more key hires to be announced soon."