Anthony J. Peters, 94; Dealmaker and C&W CEO

NEW YORK CITY-Anthony J. Peters, onetime CEO of Cushman & Wakefield and one of the city’s leading dealmakers, died Oct. 7 in Fort Myers, FL. He was 94.

Along with his brothers Leone (1911-1988) and Vincent, a current vice chairman with C&W, Peters helped drive the company’s expansion in the 1960s and spearheaded its sale to RCA Corp. in 1970. He rose through the ranks from the 1940s on, becoming president and CEO of C&W in 1971 and chairman of the board in 1976. In all, he worked for the company for more than half a century, first joining as a 17-year-old office boy and rejoining after a three-year stint in the US Army Air Corps during World War II.

Peters was also a key figure in the postwar revival of Lower Manhattan, convincing the New York Stock Exchange to lease land at 20 Broad St. to developer General Realty & Utilities Corp. for the construction of the first new office tower in the Financial District since the Great Depression. For that he won the Real Estate Board of New York’s Most Ingenious Deal of the Year Award in 1959, an award he received again the following year.

A 1967 profile of Peters in the New York Times called him “the busiest broker in New York.” He had recently represented Chase Manhattan in a 1.1-million-square-foot Downtown lease that at $200 million was the largest in dollar value ever seen in New York at that time, breaking a record he had set only a few months earlier with an 879,000-square-foot, $130-million deal for First National City Bank at 111 Wall St. His leasing record of 3.3 million square feet in a single year has still not been broken, according to C&W.

Peters also spearheaded C&W’s project management business. In that capacity, he played a key role in the development of 9 W. 57th St. in Midtown, the Sears (now Willis) Tower in Chicago and the Bank of America Tower in San Francisco.

He is survived by his wife Irene, eight children and their spouses, his brother Vincent, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, the family would appreciate contributions to the Cardinal Cooke Guild, 1011 First Ave., New York, NY 10022 or to a charity of your choice. A service at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, NY will be announced at a later date.