Jason Whitcombe Joins as C&W Builds Up APAC Executive Team

Real estate consultancy Cushman & Wakefield continues to build up its Asia Pacific management team this month with the addition of Jason Whitcombe to lead one of the company’s largest divisions, as well as the promotion of Emily Gray to Executive Director.

The New York-based agency, which ranks third among global property services firms behind CBRE and JLL, has been fortifying its team regionally in recent years as it seeks to improve its market share in Asia.

Cushman & Wakefield’s latest leadership moves come as the company is reportedly being put up for sale by the Agnelli family and the global revenues of property agencies continue to climb following the lean years after the global financial crisis.

Cushman Fortifies Occupier Services Division

Whitcombe joined C&W at the beginning of this month as Managing Director for Occupier Services, Asia Pacific. Based in Singapore, Whitcombe will be overseeing the Facilities Management, Account Management and Programme Management business lines for the company regionally and will report to Richard Middleton, Head of Occupier Services for APAC and EMEA.

Cushman’s latest leader for its Asia team comes to the company from Johnson Controls, where Whitcombe had spent the last four years, serving most recently as Vice President for Global Financial Services in Asia for the engineering firm. The graduate of the University of East London also spent more than ten years with JLL in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, as well as working as an office leasing broker for CBRE in Hong Kong during the 1990s.

Gray will be supporting Whitcombe in his new role as she assumes leadership for Cushman’s Account Management team across Hong Kong, Singapore, China and India. The nine-year C&W veteran will continue to be based in Hong Kong.

Gray’s promotion to Executive Director comes after the University of the West of England graduate led a number of successful bids for major corporate accounts, including for Citibank and Prudential, in recent years.

Property Agency Puts Up for Sale Sign

According to sources familiar with the proposed transaction – as cited in the Wall Street Journal, Exor SpA, which owns 81 percent of Cushman & Wakefield put the company up for sale last month. The decision to sell off the firm – which Exor bought eight years ago – comes as rising real estate prices drive up the value of commercial property agencies globally.

Exor, which belongs to the Agnelli family and also controls Fiat Chrysler as well as the Juventus football club, is seeking as much as $2 billion for Cushman & Wakefield, but is not considering acquisition bids from competitors.

The company has reportedly hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley to help look for a buyer for Cushman, after FirstService announced last month that it would be spinning off Colliers International as an independent entity, and a US private equity firm last year acquired DTZ.