GlobeSt.com EXCLUSIVE: Grubb's Former COO Returns to E&Y Post

NEW YORK CITY-Don’t tell Mark Costello you can’t go home again. GlobeSt.com has learned that, five months after leaving his COO post at locally based Grubb & Ellis, Costello is preparing to reclaim his chair as partner in Ernst & Young’s real estate advisory services practice. Reporting to the group’s leader, managing partner Mark Smith, Costello will be focusing on corporate real estate, sources familiar with the talks reveal. In that position, the mainline activity will be to help E&Y’s major clients formulate and implement a corporate real estate strategy.

Costello left E&Y a year and half ago to become part of the senior executive team then being assembled by Grubb’s recently appointed president and CEO Barry Barovick. Barovick is also an E&Y alumnus.

When word spread that Costello was departing G&E this past July, Barovick told GlobeSt.com that the departure was “a mutual agreement. It is better for Mark in light of the fact that I’m going to be much more hands on. For me to be effective, this was the best way to handle that. But it was definitely a mutual agreement.”

“In his position as chief operating officer, Mark brought both passion and professionalism to the job,” Barovick stated. Costello is scheduled to arrive at E&Y’s Times Square offices next week.