Savills Buying Eastdil for $1.2 Billion

Link?

https://greenstreetnews.com/article/eastdil-agrees-blockbuster-900m-sale

https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/commercial-real-estate/savills-buying-eastdil-brokerage-consolidation-133608

"London-based Savills has reached an agreement to absorb Eastdil Secured for $1.2B, Green Street News reports.

The deal is expected to be announced Thursday when Savills’ quarterly earnings results are disclosed. New York-based Eastdil will keep its name and remain "culturally independent," according to Green Street, which reported that Savills would pay 60% of the purchase price in cash and the remainder in shares.

Savills and Eastdil didn't immediately respond to Bisnow's request for comment.

Eastdil last traded hands in 2019 when Wells Fargo & Co. offloaded a majority share to Guggenheim Investments, on behalf of Guggenheim's clients, and Singapore-based investment company Tamasek. Wells Fargo remained a minority owner.

The move comes just months after Savills welcomed a new top executive. Simon Shaw came in as CEO on Jan. 1, succeeding Mark Ridley, who retired at the end of 2025.

This is a developing story"

Insane indeed... close to analysts to VPs in both camps in London, I don't think many expected this. Interesting to see where this puts Savills Capital Advisors compared to CBRE IB and ex-HFF guys at JLL

Semi-related, but SCA poached a few from Eastdil late last year

Wow..didn’t see this one coming.

I’m curious how this really unfolds. Plans to operate independently still under ES name but not sure how that works with Savills as essentially a brokerage shop. Different to when Wells owned them.

I guess Eastdil doesn’t have the other areas like tenant representation/leasing so maybe that’s the play long term is to let ES still do their thing on debt/equity and now they have those support functions like all other brokerage shops have I don’t know.

I’m sure this will play out like HFF/JLL where the stronger teams pushed out the weaker ones. No idea what Savills has from a capital markets standpoint - I thought they were mostly tenant rep - but the incoming Eastdil teams will push out anyone they don’t like.

Any London / Europe views?

Wow this is wild. Isn’t this a huge cultural mismatch?

Savills will continue to operate as a separate entity from ES I imagine. You’re not going to have ES people just move into an office and trade clients with Savills like HFF/JLL

Savills Press Release: Savills announces acquisition of Eastdil Secured LLC

It is a risky deal as a large component of Eastdil production comes from guys over 63 years old. That's tough to pro forma. Happy for those guys, they're fantastic people.

Never understood the 'operating independently, not changing anything, there's no synergies' strategy with acquisitions.  Then why TF are you doing this?  Can't wait to get a bunch of IB analysts to own me on this question.   

Sometimes the weaker acquirer has the extremely rare corporate asset: self awareness 

I know nothing about Savills here in the US other than they do a lot on the tenant and leasing side of things. I thought they have a pretty strong team in London for Capital Markets? Or am I wrong?

If that’s the case, Eastdil in US will be fine but not sure how that works in conjunction with Eastdils strong London teams.