From left: David Gialanella and Cushman & Wakefield CEO Brett White
David Gialanella, the former head of the New York Tri-State region for commercial brokerage DTZ, has departed Cushman & Wakefield in wake of the company’s mega-merger with DTZ.
Gialanella, who was appointed executive managing director for DTZ’s New York office in 2013, is leaving his position at Cushman & Wakefield with a possible aim toward joining another commercial real estate firm, multiple sources told The Real Deal.
Gialanella declined to comment on the matter, while a Cushman & Wakefield spokesperson did not return requests for comment.
Gialanella’s is one of the higher-profile departures in wake of DTZ’s $2 billion mega-merger with Cushman & Wakefield, which closed last fall. The former CBRE executive is no stranger to Cushman, having spent 20 years at the brokerage earlier in his career and serving on Cushman’s board of directors.
His time at DTZ was marked by several entity-level deals that eventually led to the company becoming part of what is now one of the largest commercial real estate brokerages in the world.
Last January, DTZ completed a merger with commercial real estate services firm Cassidy Turley that saw the two companies’ New York offices combined — with Gialanella ceding his role as head of New York Tri-State operations to Cassidy Turley counterpart Peter Hennessy.
Then came the even bigger merger with Cushman & Wakefield, which saw Cushman Tri-State region president Ron Lo Russo tapped to continue heading the new, combined brokerage giant’s New York office.
The merger, which created a company with 43,000 employees and more than $5.5 billion in annual revenues under the Cushman & Wakefield name, has seen executives leave for rival firms like Colliers International and a round of national layoffs that impacted as many as 250 marketing and research employees.
Late last year, reports claimed Cushman & Wakefield was not keeping pace with competitors JLL and CBRE because of its debt, but could go public in 2016 under CEO Brett White to beef up its assets.