CBRE to Buy Johnson Controls Corporate Real-Estate Unit

By Peter Grant 

CBRE Group Inc., the world's largest commercial real-estate services company, is negotiating to buy the division of Johnson Controls Inc. that manages 1.8 billion square feet of corporate real estate globally, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The price couldn't be determined. But analysts have estimated the value of the division--named Global Workplace Solutions--was between $600 million and $1.5 billion. It accounted for about 10% of the Milwaukee-based company's $42.7 billion in sales in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 2013.

Johnson Controls announced last year it had hired Bank of America Merrill Lynch to divest the division, which it has owned for more than 20 years, because it didn't fit with its core businesses. Chief executive Alex Molinaroli has been focusing, instead, on York-brand heating and air-conditioning equipment for commercial buildings, and on devices for monitoring and regulating electricity usage, temperature, fire safety and security.

A spokesman for Johnson declined to comment except to say: "We're still in the process of divesting our Global Workplace Solutions business." A spokesman for CBRE declined to comment.

CBRE's talks to buy the division come at a time of increasing mergers and acquisition activity in the commercial real-estate services business. Cushman & Wakefield Inc. recently hired an adviser to put that firm on the block. Also, Toronto-based FirstService Corp. announced plans to spin off its commercial real-estate unit, Colliers International, as a separate publicly traded company. And private equities firm TPG Capital has acquired Chicago based DTZ and Washington-based Cassidy Turley and merged those two firms together.

Bob Tita contributed to this article

Write to Peter Grant at [e-mail]

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