Simon Shaw, just 10 weeks into the job as Savills CEO, was about to break down the biggest deal of his career, the takeover of Eastdil Secured. But before he did, he wanted to share a tidbit.

“As I was coming here down to do this, one of our receptionists said, ‘Simon, you look a bit peaky.’ I said, ‘well, actually, I am a bit knackered.’ She said, ‘Strap in.’”

Impossible to think of a more British start to a new era for one of the preeminent American capital-markets firms. The Savills acquisition of Eastdil is a BFD that says much about the state of the CRE brokerage business, from valuations to talent retention to how things are spun. Savills is paying $1.1B for a business whose value is almost entirely in people who can walk, and the entire deal structure is an elaborate attempt to prevent that from happening. The Promote knew it warranted a deeper dive than what’s currently out there. So, let’s go. Strap in. 👇

This week on the pod, we have no choice but to tackle the topic of war. The conflict with Iran continues to roil markets, and CRE's biggest allocators are in sixes and sevens. Fewer young people are going to college 👩‍🎓 , which puts a big ? on what's historically been one of the biggest drivers of real estate activity. And with special servicers like Rialto continuing to play an outsized role in the market, some of their more exotic strategies are coming under the cosh.

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Some of the big news to come out of the announcement:

Leadership shuffle: D Michael Van Konynenburg, known universally as Mike VK (a relief, b/c Shaw was struggling w/ the name), will be Eastdil CEO. March, who took the helm in ‘06 at the time of the Wells acquisition, becomes exec chair 🪑 VK was up on the dais during the earnings call w/ Shaw and Savills’ new CFO Nick Sanderson, and gave an extended presentation about Eastdil’s business (more on that shortly.) James “Mac” McCaffrey, who is spearheading the firm’s expansion on the continent, will be president – Savills clearly sees him as their man in London and the int’l growth guy (Amazing trivia: McCaffrey was a serious NBA prospect who appeared in an iconic Nestle ad w/ Larry Bird 🏀 )

Curiously, March’s name did not come up during the earnings call, though he did have a statement in the official announcement. The big TBD is what the exec chair position will mean in practice. Is this a glorified ride-into-the-sunset for a certified 🐐 of the game, or will March continue to be in the mix? Starting as an intern in the late 70s, March has put in nearly a half-century at Eastdil, and tracing his arc (fascinating convo here) is akin to tracing the modern deal history of institutional CRE (Blackstone-EOP* 💇, Anbang-Waldorf, Macklowe-GM*, Ivanhoe-3 Bryant Park). He’s stayed involved in marquee assignments, including the $1B-plus sale of 590 Madison to RXR-led Gemini Office Ventures + Elliott Management. He’s known to be one of the most well-connected brokers advisors in the industry, w/ a monster Rolodex of C-suite r’ships (riffing on the joys of Ferrari ownership w/ Goodwin Gaw) across the 🌏. If he’s semi-out, that might hamper Savills’ ability to go straight to the top. Eastdil declined to comment beyond the announcement, but a source familiar w/ the firm stressed that March would remain heavily involved w/ clients.
* March memorably describes the whirlwind of dealmaking around this transaction as akin to being a “short-order cook” 👨‍🍳
**Macklowe on his first impression of March: A “freak” with “shit-kicker boots, with these pointy toes, like he's going to kill a cockroach in the corner.” 🪳

Price is Right: Savills is paying $921M (60% cash, 40% stock) and assuming $191M in debt, for a total enterprise value of $1.1B. Now, that is a nice markup for Singaporean state-owned investor Temasek & Guggenheim Partners, who backed a management-led recap in ‘19 at an est. $400M+ valuation. But it’s a far cry from the $1.6-$2B valuation that Eastdil execs pegged the firm’s value at this time last year, when it was revealed that it had hired BDT & MSD Partners to figure out its options. (Per sources, Eastdil has been courting suitors for longer than just a year.)

Golden Handcuffs: This is the thing that puts this whole deal into perspective. When you’re buying a brokerage, all the hoopla about platform, technology, etc. is noise. What you’re really buying is 4 things: brand, talent, deal pipeline, and relationships. The word “Eastdil” is shorthand for “big, institutional deals,” and so Savills is smart to leave the brand in place, particularly stateside where Savills is mostly known for tenant rep work (FWIW the capital markets biz will technically be “Eastdil Secured Savills,” but no one will call it that.) The pipeline is pretty straightforward. So that leaves talent & r’ships, and the latter is a function of the former: clients tend to be loyal to their brokers, NOT their brokerages – just think of Eastdil’s drop in the NYC charts the year after Harmon & Spies decamped to Cushman. So, the Q becomes, how do you keep Eastdil’s rainmakers beholden to their new bosses? You do it through stock. 💹 🔒 👇

From the announcement: “The majority of the after-tax consideration received by Eastdil Secured employees will be in Savills equity.” Meaning: No quick cash-outs for Eastdil stalwarts – they’ve got to stick it out under the new regime to make the payoff worthwhile. What’s more, their upside is at the whims of shareholders who haven’t been that hot on the brokerage’s stock – it’s about a third off its late ‘21 highs and has gone basically nowhere over the past year. Eastdil’s 85 sr. employees, who collectively will hold 6.3% of Savills, have lock-ups released on the 4th, 5th, and 6th anniversaries of the completion of the merger, as well as non-solicits and noncompetes, “which, if breached, will result in forfeiture of a significant majority of their unvested Consideration Shares.”

Temasek, Guggenheim, and Wells, by contrast, will have far shorter lock-ups of 12 & 18 months. They can take their spoils and move on.

So we’ll see how Eastdil’s rainmakers digest these terms, and whether the acquisition – as acquisitions are wont to do – leads to some churn. The firm has lost some key talent in the last 2Y, notably debt ace Jonathan 🔥 stone and the Smolen/Bohler multi team to Newmark & industrial vet Adam Pastor to Cushman.

Rainmakers - a deeply incomplete list: Kristin Gannon (M&A, Advisory); Will Silverman/Gary Phillips & Daniel Parker(NY I-sales); Grant Frankel (debt), Rob Walters (data centers); Louis Stervinou/Jeff Davis (hotels); Ryan Reid (multi), Stephen Van Dusen (SF). Unlike its peers, Eastdil tends to credit the firm on deals (akin to how The Economist does bylines) rather than individual brokers, so it’s surprisingly hard to get a full picture of the alpha dealmakers. Eastdil also has some OG legends like Steve Silk & Jay Borzi (“could sell ketchup popsicles to a woman in white gloves,” is how one West Coast player described Borzi), but tough to tell if they’re still on the front lines. Brokerage, as many will tell you, is a grueling sport best played by the young.

The $195M 🥕: The filing confirms chatter that Eastdil offered a large incentive package - $195M – as word of it courting suitors emerged last March. It amortizes at ~$48M/year through ‘30. Think of it as a pre-sale retention bomb.

Headcount: The Eastdil posse is 650 employees, w/ 450 of them client-facing. Mike VK said Eastdil does ≈ $200B annually in deals, which would put its per-capita productivity well above its peers. Still, fair to expect some downsizing on non client-facing roles.

Revenues: We finally know what Eastdil actually makes! The firm pulled in $633M in ‘25, w/ a L5Y avg. of $600M (‘21 was a monster year at $862M, ‘23 was hella rough at $367M). Net income attributable to members (pretax?) was $55.8M in ‘25. Compare this to the $113M “Underlying EBITDA” Mike VK highlighted – i.e. the number that Savills wants shareholders to focus on.

Green Street’s annual brokerage rankings (considered the definitive tally) provide more context: Eastdil placed 4th overall nationwide, w/ a deal volume of $36B and market share of 13.8%. It’s notable though that in a year where many of its peers saw big surges in deal volume (Newmark up 45.5% YoY, W&D 42%, CBRE 28.8%) , Eastdil stayed flat (0.1%). It is a remarkably well-rounded firm tho, posting big numbers in most asset classes that it competes in, and topping the charts in both hotels and data-center sales – this latter sector is seen as a big growth area. In office, though it came 2nd behind Newmark, it took the honors in the top 3 markets.

Mike VK highlighted Eastdil’s dominance in M&A, and in what The Promote refers to as AUM Gobbling ™ (swag coming soon): “The big investors are getting bigger around the world,” he said, re. to the growing need for multiple funds, continuation vehicles and JVs. “We do a lot of that.” He also gave 💌 to the firm’s debt placement business, which accounted for a whopping 42% of the firm’s revenues in ‘25. Financing work, he noted, was less cyclical than the rest of Eastdil’s business lines, and here too he flagged the girthier nature of its deals: An avg size of $225M, which he said was 3.5X that of its nearest rival.

Next, let’s see how the deal stacks up w/ other big-ticket brokerage M&A in recent years. Promote Insiders: Read on at the end of this newsletter 👇