Colliers Seeley Attracts 9 Top Brokers

LOS ANGELES-Colliers Seeley, the re-energized brokerage firm that’s aggressively pushing to expand its share of the Southern California market, has hired nine top brokers away from some of its chief competitors—and says more may be added soon.

The list of new recruits includes four brokers from Cushman & Wakefield’s Downtown office, the former SVP of C&W’s growing Coachella Valley operations, a top-producing CB Richard Ellis broker and the former president of IREG Inc.

It also includes Marc Spellman and John Sabourin, the former Lee & Associates brokers who helped put together Health Net’s recent $100-million lease for 288,000 sf at Lennar Partners’ new LNR Warner Center in Woodland Hills—the Southland’s biggest office lease transaction of the year.

“We’re pushing our operations to another level,” Colliers Seeley President Cody Plott told GlobeSt.com late Thursday. “These guys are going to help get us there.”

All told, Plott says, his nine new brokers have recently accounted for more than 13.6 million sf of lease and sale transactions valued at more than $6 billion. Combined, they have more than 110 years of professional experience.

In addition to former Lee & Associates principals Spellman and Sabourin, the new hires include Brian Campbell, who left his post as president of IREG Inc. to join Plott’s Colliers Seeley team; Randy Kuttler, one of the top producers in the City of Industry office of CB Richard Ellis; and Mervyn Kirshner, formerly of Cushman & Wakefield’s Palm Springs/Coachella Valley office.

The four brokers leaving C&W’s Downtown office for Colliers Seeley are Hayden Eaves, Shaun Stiles, Kinden Mitchell and Robin Devereux. Eaves has worked on some of Downtown’s biggest deals, and Stiles has a stellar record in the Tri-Cities market of Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena. Mitchell recently completed 350,000 sf of deals in both of those submarkets, while Devereux entered the business three years ago after graduating from Princeton and getting her law degree from Pepperdine University in Malibu.

Plott took over the reigns of The Seeley Co. late last year. Though the company was already considered a top-tier regional brokerage at the time, it recently adopted the Colliers Seeley name to reflect its stepped-up relationship with Colliers International, one of the largest brokerage companies in the world.

Plott joined the company after helping Airport Group International purchase 10 airports around the world as SVP. He previously spent 22 years at Hyatt Hotels Corp., the last five as worldwide VP of sales.

Plott tells GlobeSt.com that he’s negotiating to lure away other top talent from competitors to help Colliers Seeley expand into new markets and deploy a bevy of new technology initiatives.