Savills' $1.1B Eastdil Deal Brings It Closer To Brokerage Heavyweights

The tectonic plates of the global commercial real estate industry shifted on Thursday when London-based brokerage giant Savills announced it would be purchasing one of the biggest investment sales players across the pond: Eastdil Secured.

The $1.1B deal allows Eastdil to continue to operate under its existing brand and business model. The deal, which is expected to close by the end of the year, adds Eastdil’s 650 employees to Savills’ workforce of more than 40,000. 

With the merger, the companies are set to become the No. 2 brokerage in the world for capital markets transactions of $100M or larger, Savills said in its release Thursday. It’s the type of megamerger that commercial real estate brokerage hasn’t seen since the pandemic — the biggest since JLL’s 2019 acquisition of HFF.

Savills' deal, expected to close in the second or third quarter, values Eastdil at more than twice what Wells Fargo sold it for in 2019. But it gives the UK giant immediate heft in the lucrative U.S. property sales market and a business with a much higher profit margin than its own.

Eastdil hired an advisory firm in February 2025 to seek out strategic partnerships, and Savills has long had its eye on U.S. growth. Their tie-up is seen by analysts and market watchers as a logical merger of companies with complementary specialties and geographies.

In addition to its large investment sales and debt brokerage business, Eastdil handles mergers and acquisitions, corporate advisory and capital venture formation, structuring and fundraises. Savills can provide leasing services and property management to Eastdil's investor clients across their global portfolios. 

“One of the brilliant things about it is there is very, very little overlap, whether it's services, locations, or clients,” Savills CEO Simon Shaw said on a call with investors Thursday. “This creates a lot of white space for the combined group to move into and to bring a broader suite of services to each of our clients. I think that's hugely exciting.”

When news broke in the media Wednesday that a deal was essentially done, it hadn't yet been announced to the rank-and-file.

One Savills broker, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak about the deal, said he saw the news when he logged on to his CoStar account. 

“Then I start getting texts from people both internally and externally saying, ‘What?’” the broker said. 

Surprise quickly gave way to excitement because of Eastdil's reputation as big game hunters. Savills executives spoke to employees about the deal at a 2 p.m. companywide meeting Thursday, sources said. They didn't give specifics about how the companies would work together.

“I love the idea,” the broker said Thursday after the official announcement. “I love what I've seen. I think it could be very interesting.”

What's The Deal

While the total value of the acquisition is a little more than $1.1B, Savills is paying Eastdil's owners $552.8M in cash and $368.5M in shares to acquire all of the equity in the business, plus assuming its existing debt of $191.3M, it said in a press release.

Eastdil's 85 senior employees, who own 39% of their business, will own 6% of Savills after the deal closes. The majority of their payment after taxes will come via shares subject to lock-up provisions, according to Savills' release, “creating meaningful long-term alignment with Savills’ shareholders.”

The other Eastdil equity holders, a Guggenheim Investments fund, Singapore-based Temasek and Wells Fargo, will own 5%, 4% and 0.5% of Savills' stock, respectively, while former Eastdil employees will receive 0.1%.

“From a headline valuation, it looks OK. It's certainly not a steal, certainly above the valuation that we've seen Savills trade at historically, but some of that is U.S. versus UK names,” Peel Hunt Deputy Head of Research Clyde Lewis, a Savills analyst, said in an interview. “But I think it's a great deal for the business over the longer term.” 

Savills shares, listed on the London Stock Exchange, dropped roughly 7% Thursday after the announcement. The company has a market value of about £1.3B.

Savills plans to take out a 12-month bridge loan, with two six-month extensions, of up to $800M to finance the cash it's putting up in the deal and refinance Eastdil's debt, according to the release. The projected cost of the debt is 5.5% to 6% all-in.

The transaction is expected to be “strongly cash generative,” Savills’ release says, citing Eastdil's investment sales offerings as a higher-margin business than leasing advisory. The company expects “direct revenue synergies” of £60M (or about $80M) and roughly £15M ($20M) of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and appreciation in the medium term.

Eastdil reported $633M in revenue last year and $113M of underlying EBITDA. Savills brought in nearly £2.6B of revenue last year and $145.3M of underlying profit. Eastdil's underlying EBITDA margin was 17.8% last year, compared to Savills' margin of 6%.

Because of the complementary nature of the businesses, the companies don't expect any redundancy-related layoffs as a result of the merger. But in the future, they could save money by colocating offices and leveraging their larger scale for improved purchasing power, “however these are not likely to be significant,” according to the release.

The companies “will be very much sort of helping each other sell into each other's markets, rather than sort of a big cost-cutting exercise,” Lewis said. “So it's a slightly different process.”

Under the new structure, Eastdil CEO Roy March is now executive chairman, while its president, D. Michael Van Konynenburg, is Eastdil’s new CEO. Taking his role as president is the company’s head of Europe, James McCaffrey. Van Konynenburg and McCaffrey are joining Savills' board.

Shaw himself rose to the CEO position at Savills just a few months ago. The former chief financial officer of the company, Shaw took over on Jan. 1 for Mark Ridley, who retired at the end of 2025.

How We Got Here

The stars aligned for Savills and Eastdil's merger.

A little over a year ago, Eastdil tapped consultants from BDT & MSD Partners to find new partnerships and growth initiatives to “best position the firm for an environment of accelerating transactions,” Bloomberg reported. Eastdil was focused on global expansion, especially in Asia, with possible office openings in Japan and Australia.

At the same time, Savills was feeling pressure to expand its presence into the U.S. capital markets, Shaw said Thursday. 

“Today's announcement also delivers the one thing that, candidly, a number of people in this room have been crying out for for years, which is a preeminent capital markets business in the United States, the biggest capital pool, capital market for real estate in the world,” Shaw said.

Savills was founded as Savill and Son in 1855 in London by Alfred Savill, specializing in selling the estates of the British nobility. But in the 21st century, it has been focused on global expansion.

It bought U.S. real estate investment bank Granite Partners in 2007 for $54M, but the Global Financial Crisis prevented it from making an impact on the world's largest property market. In 2014, it bought New York-based tenant representation firm Studley Inc., which had 25 offices in North America but few capital markets professionals.

That deal came amid the last period of major brokerage M&A activity. It was struck two years after BCG Partners bought Grubb & Ellis and Newmark Knight Frank to create what is now Newmark and as TPG was acquiring DTZ, Cassidy Turley and Cushman & Wakefield to form the globe's third-largest brokerage.

But outside of JLL's acquisition of sales specialist HFF in 2019 for $2B, it has been a quiet decade for billion-dollar mergers.

In recent years, M&A activity in the commercial real estate world has been defined by larger brokerage houses gobbling up smaller, more specialized firms to diversify their overall offerings.

JLL last March bought renewable energy investment bank Javelin Capital, a few months before Newmark's purchase of Dallas-based real estate management consulting firm RealFoundations Inc. and CBRE’s $1.2B acquisition of data center engineering and maintenance firm Pearce Services.

Diminished real estate values, rebounding activity, lower cost of credit and the advent of artificial intellligence are all spurring increased M&A activity. But the era of the megamerger isn't coming back anytime soon, Lewis said.

“Do I think we'll see loads more deals? No,” he said. “I think you might see one or two more targeted deals, but I think it's a case of growing market share in new markets.”

Brokers React

While the news of the merger rippled across the industry, it didn't exactly generate shockwaves. Because the businesses' core strengths were complementary, brokerage industry experts said it made perfect sense.

“It’s very tough these days to be solely focused on one service line or only one area and be relevant with all the expectations of having the correct data available for future predictions of where the market’s going,” said Roberta Liss, a former Cushman & Wakefield market leader who launched her own firm last year. “You need a great deal of data, the right AI applications, and it’s hard to create all this when you’re either in one market or one service line.”

While Shaw said the acquisition “will superpower this organization for the next generation,” brokers who spoke to Bisnow on Thursday said they don't think it puts Savills close to equal footing with the world's biggest brokerages. 

“I think it's just a consolidation on the institutional side and it makes sense,” Marcus & Millichap Atlanta market leader John Leonard said. “Institutions are always looking to merge and get leaner and meaner.”

But considering how much value Eastdil brings from both a client side and a reputation side, it could be a first step.

“If Savills were planning to hit the gas on going full-service, this is a big inroad into doing that,” Cresa Executive Managing Principal Tom Tindall said. 

Eastdil specializes in transactions larger than $100M — it was the No. 1 broker for big capital markets deals in the U.S. last year, Savills said in the release. About 58% of its business is on the equity side, while the other 42% is on the debt side. 

In the U.S., Savills is largely focused on representing tenants in office leasing decisions, while it also has a property management division in Europe, Asia and Australia. 

“Eastdil has always been a premium brand with exceptional experts in it on the capital markets side,” Liss said. “So you add into it the synergy and the expertise of the tenant rep side and how to view an asset through a user’s eyes, not from the ownership eyes, but from users' eyes, is rather brilliant.”

Jon Banister contributed reporting.