Knight Frank and DTZ are planning to restructure their Australian operations in a bid to close the gap with rivals.
Both firms have 100% ownership of this part of their Asia Pacific businesses, which are headed by UK executives. Market leaders CBRE and Colliers International are run by Australians based either locally or in Hong Kong.
Local agents say CBRE now dominates the Australian market, after investing heavily in expansion, and Colliers International, the previous market leader, is second.
KF, which bought in all the equity in Australia only two years ago, has started negotiations to sell a stake to half a dozen directors, led by David Woolford in Sydney and Phil Saboulis in Adelaide.
Nick Thomlinson, who takes over as senior partner on 1 May, said KF had bought in the Australian business because previous 49% shareholder Suncorp had wanted to sell. “Sometimes when you have outside shareholders for whom it isn’t a core business they have different corporate agendas, and we were the natural people to buy it.” The other big shareholders, local agents Roy Woodhouse and Ian Ballieu, also sold.
“But our strategy has always been to involve local directors because we believe the guys running it should own part of it,” Tomlinson added. He is going out to Australia next week.
At DTZ, UK director David Steventon, who has been running the Australian business, is also planning to return, by June, after appointing Chris Johnson to replace him.
Johnson, 39, joins on 15 March as managing director from private property company Vinta. He previously worked at Westpac and at Colliers.
DTZ is also taking on two more senior directors, including Rob Morris from Ernst & Young.
DTZ’s chief executive, Mark Struckett, said: “We never planned to have a 100% subsidiary in Australia but four of our people have retired over time and we have taken their shares in. The market is a long way away and we prefer to have people out there with equity interests there is logic in people being aligned closely.”
