Savills Appoints New President

David Lipson, President, Savills North America. Image courtesy of Savills

Savills has tapped David Lipson as its next president for the North America region. With more than 30 years of leadership and commercial real estate experience at Savills, Lipson will now split his time between the North American headquarters in New York City and the firm’s Washington, D.C. offices.

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Lipson joined the company in 1989 and has co-managed the Mid-Atlantic region since 2004. He serves on the North American board and executive committee since 2014. 

The new president established the federal government practice at Savills. The team became the first advisor retained by the General Services Administration to lease the US Department of Transportation’s 1.4 million-square-foot build-to-suit headquarters. Over the last two decades, Savills has completed more than 1,600 projects for the GSA and other agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Lipson’s client list includes WilmerHale, Williams & Connolly, Arent Fox, Blank Rome, CVS Health and Carlyle Group. For more than 20 years, he has also represented the RAND Corp. and the Institute for Defense Analyses.

Most recently, he played an important role in the acquisition of Macro Consultants in 2020. Lipson has participated in commercial real estate transactions totaling more than 92 million square feet.

In June 2020, Lipson negotiated an 82,000-square-foot office lease at a 445,000-square-foot building in Washington, D.C. The tenant, National Endowment for Democracy, signed a 16-year contract for the 10th and 11th floors of the property.