Cush & Wake takes over TAG

Real Estate Weekly, Jan 17, 2001

Cushman & Wakefield President, U.S. Operations Bruce E. Mosler announced that Cushman & Wakefield and The Apartment Group (TAG) have announced their intention to merge their multi-family brokerage operations to form a new entity, The Apartment Group, a Cushman & Wakefield company. The two companies signed a letter of intent on Jan. 3. The combined sales of multi-family property of the two companies over the last 24 months exceeds $2 billion. The new venture will be headquartered in Atlanta.

"Apartment ownership plays an increasingly important role in institutional portfolios. For example, Lend Lease, one of the nation's largest pension fund advisory companies and one of our clients, intends to purchase $1 billion in apartments during 2001," said Mosler. "This merger greatly enhances our ability to serve our existing client base and will play an important role in our plans to grow and diversify our business."

"Taking TAG's proven business model, which has made it so successful in the Southeast, and applying it nationally to C&W's multi-family operations affords us an opportunity to more fully capitalize on the strong and growing multi-family market," said Cushman & Wakefield President, Financial Services, Len Helbig, who will oversee the group's operations.

"Our plan is to strengthen and to build our capabilities in all of our key regional operations."

"We have built a very successful apartment brokerage business here in the Southeast. Merging our operations with Cushman & Wakefield will provide us with the ability to build a truly national company quickly," said Evan D. Jennings, a TAG principal.

"The Apartment Group, with its foundation in Atlanta, dramatically improves our multi-family capability virtually overnight," said Mike Elting, senior managing director and branch manager of Cushman & Wakefield of Georgia Inc.

"The addition of TAG's principals and entire staff bring a new dimension to our Southeast capabilities."

"From our Orlando base, we will soon expand to Northern and Southern Florida. We expect to double our business in Florida," said Cole Whitaker, an Orlando TAG partner.