Latest Colliers Investment Nears Half-Billion

By Barbra Murray

Colliers International

Colliers International Group has been making great strides in the five-year growth plan it established upon spinning off from FirstService in 2015. The firm’s most recent move takes it a big step closer to realizing its objective of doubling in size by 2020. The global commercial real estate services firm just inked a deal to acquire 75 percent of Harrison Street Real Estate Capital LLC, a leading real estate investment management firm, from its founders for $450 million.

Focused exclusively on the education, healthcare and storage sectors, Chicago-based Harrison Street made its debut in 2005, and today the company has approximately $14.6 billion in assets under management. “The investment in Harrison Street is transformational and the most significant in our history,” Jay Hennick, chairman & CEO of Colliers International Group, said in a prepared statement. “The transaction establishes us as one of the major players in global real estate investment management, providing an important new growth platform that also facilitates the integration of our existing operations in Europe.”

Ultimately, the price tag on the deal will exceed the half-billion-dollar mark, as terms of the agreement call for Colliers to fork over an additional $100 million in 2022, should certain performance targets be met.

Growth gains

The Harrison Street transaction, scheduled to close in the third quarter, is one of a host of acquisitions Colliers has made since its mid-2015 separation from FirstService. In 2016, the firm acquired ICADE Asset Management and ICADE Conseil, a French asset management and investment advisory services platform that boasted a portfolio of assets under management valued at more than €2 billion, or approximately $2.3 billion in today’s dollars. In 2017, Colliers closed 10 acquisitions spanning the firm’s three distinct operating segments, Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. Among last year’s purchases was London-based Vision Asset Management Co., a leading European hospitality asset management firm with clients in the U.K. and across EMEA. And one of the firm’s first announcements of 2018 was its purchase of Ovenia Group, one of Finland’s top real estate management and service companies.

“We are on track to achieving our goals,” Hennick wrote in his annual message to shareholders this year. “We continue to be presented with more opportunities today than at any other time in our history.”

Commercial Property Executive has ranked Colliers as one of the top property management firms in the world for two consecutive years.

Image courtesy of Colliers