Newmark lured Douglas Harmon and Adam Spies, ranked as New York’s top capital markets team, from rival Cushman & Wakefield as higher interest rates have slowed investment sales and heightened the competition for fewer deals.
Harmon and Spies, partners for more than 20 years, will serve as co-heads of U.S. capital markets for Newmark’s capital markets group alongside Newmark’s current co-heads, Kevin Shannon and Robert Griffin, according to a Newmark statement on Wednesday. They will report to Newmark CEO Barry Gosin.
“Our Capital Markets advisory business has seen dramatic growth,” Gosin said in the statement, adding that the pair, billed as “milestone hires,” will “amplify Newmark's strength, upwards trajectory and momentum.” He said historically the company’s “investment sales and debt businesses have had a multiplier effect, which drives outsized growth.”
Since Newmark became a publicly traded company in 2017, it said it’s continued to gain capital market share by generating $155 billion of overall investment sales and debt transactions over the trailing 12 months that ended Sept. 30, which nearly tripled the total in 2017.
Cushman & Wakefield didn’t immediately respond to a CoStar News request seeking comment. Newmark declined to provide additional details.
Top Team
Harmon, Spies and their team were ranked No. 1 in capital markets in New York for 2022, closing nearly $5.7 billion of “notable transactions” for the year, Newmark said, citing MSCI data.
The deals included the $487.5 million sale of a multifamily property located at 19 Dutch St. in lower Manhattan and the $850 million sale of the American Copper Buildings by the East River in midtown Manhattan.
They also advised the sale of the largest office, apartment and industrial transactions in New York in the past five years — 1 Manhattan West at $2.85 billion, Spring Creek Towers at $1.84 billion, and 640 Columbia St. at $330 million — as well as the $2.4 billion sale of Chelsea Market to Google in one of the largest multiuse building sales in New York history, Newmark said.
Harmon, with a career history spanning almost four decades, has inked transactions totaling over $250 billion in value since 1997, Newmark said, adding he also is the current record holder for several of the highest dollar-per-square-foot sales ever achieved across multiple property classes.
Spies joined Eastdil Secured in 1999, where he became a leading dealmaker in the New York investment sales market alongside Harmon. The pair became Eastdil’s top rainmakers before they moved to Cushman & Wakefield in 2016 as chairmen of capital markets, Newmark said.