CBRE’s £250m purchase of engineering business Norland Managed Services will make it the largest agent in the UK.
Norland, which provides technical services for commercial buildings in the UK and Ireland, will sit within the global corporate services division, one of the fastest-growing parts of the CBRE with revenue growth of 14% in Q3 2013.
The newly acquired business has 4,000 staff in 14 offices ?and a turnover in the year to ?5 April 2013 of £385m, of which £377m is from the UK. Coupled with CBRE’s UK turnover for 2013, this would catapult the agent from third to top of Estates Gazette’s agent’s rankings.
EG’s Top Agents 2013 put Savills at the top of the list with a turnover of £399.1m, followed by Jones Lang LaSalle in second with £325m (26 October, p66).
EMEA chairman Mike Strong said: “Over the past five years we have substantially expanded our outsourcing business. Around one third of our revenue now comes from this space.
“This purchase was a natural step in expanding what we do in the UK and mirrors what we already do in the United States.”
CBRE’s global portfolio of properties managed by its outsourcing business totals 3bn sq ft.
Chief executive of global corporate services Bill Concannon said the deal with Norland would give CBRE the “ability to self-perform technical engineering services in Europe, as we already do for more than 850m sq ft of client properties in North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.”
Norland’s existing operations will operate as CBRE Norland. Chief executive Ian Entwisle will lead the operation.
The purchase price is payable in cash, except for £5.6m that ?is payable in CBRE common stock to Norland senior management.
The acquisition is expected to close before the end of the year and is subject to approval by the European Commission.
nick.whitten@estatesgazette.com
