HFF arrives in UK through Leon Partners buy

Pennsylvania-based property adviser HFF is set to break into the UK market after agreeing a deal to buy Leon Partners. The New York-listed firm had been in preliminary talks with several firms about takeovers, and with high-profile agents and advisers about potential positions. From 30 Sep: HFF to join US invasion of UK agency market Founders David Church and Raj Somchand will join HFF, with four other associates, subject to the closing of the sale in early 2017. Michael Kavanau, senior managing director and co-head of HFF’s Chicago office will move to London to lead the equity and debt placement business with other HFF associates to follow. Mark Gibson, chief executive officer of HFF, said: “We are extremely excited to have David, Raj and members of the Leon team join HFF to help start, manage and grow HFF’s first business endeavor outside of the US. “Leon’s culture of integrity, teamwork and its in-depth knowledge of all capital market solutions for commercial real estate is highly synergistic with HFF’s core values and competencies.” HFF – Holliday Fenoglio Fowler – has closed more than $450bn (£346bn) of transactions since its foundation in 1998. In the first six months of this year it was the third-largest investment adviser in the US, with a 12.9% market share. US brokers league H1 2016 by transaction value ($m) RANK BROKER OFFICE RETAIL MULTI-FAMILY INDUSTRIAL HOTEL H1 TOTAL MARKET SHARE (%) CHANGE ON H115 (%) 1 Eastdil Secured 18,053.9 3,931.5 968.2 310.3 1,865.2 25,129.1 25.1 -20 2 CBRE 8,174.1 2,129.5 9,512.1 2,665.5 561.9 23,043.1 23 -6.4 3 HFF 3,970.6 2,222.8 6,008.8 214.2 504.9 12,921.3 12.9 18.7 4 JLL 2,541.9 1,175 2,202.4 984.3 1,507.8 8,411.4 8.4 -33.4 5 Cushman & Wakefield* 3,635.7 436.3 1,997.9 970 400 7,439.9 7.4 313.1 Church said: “We established Leon Partners to be a client-focused, conflict-free and truly independent business. From Sep 2015: Leon Partners hires three “We have already closed a number of high profile deals and have a very strong pipeline, which is a testament to our team and our business model. We are very excited about the prospects for our business.” Somchand added: “The opportunity to help build a truly market-leading, independent and conflict-free, best-in-class one stop real estate advisory and capital markets business is hugely compelling. “The whole team is excited to become part of HFF and looking forward to working alongside our new partners.”