Cushman & Wakefield Announces Pair of APAC Promotions

Property consultancy Cushman & Wakefield this week announced a pair of senior promotions in its team looking after the company’s largest clients.

Nick Seaton has stepped up as regional head of integrated portfolio management (IPM) for the company and will report directly to Shaun Jenkinson, Cushman & Wakefield’s managing director of global occupier services in Asia Pacific, according to a company news release.

Also advancing is Hong Kong-based executive Dawn Koo, who has been promoted to head of IPM for Greater China, reporting to Seaton.

“Both Nick and Dawn have continuously demonstrated exemplary leadership and values that are important to our business including teamwork, high performance and a client-centric mindset,” Jenkinson said. “Under their leadership, we will continue to bring the best of our teams and our global platform, including our in-depth insights, best practices and innovative solutions to deliver a positive experience for our clients across the region.”

Multi-National Concerns

Seaton will lead the company’s IPM division in Asia Pacific, where he will oversee transaction management, portfolio administration and portfolio strategy services on behalf of enterprise-level clients.

In his new role, Seaton will continue to be responsible for Cushman’s Manila-based APAC Portfolio Services Centre, which centralises lease administration and analytics for the region, together with the transaction management business across the region.

With over 20 years of real estate experience, Seaton is moving up from his former title of Southeast Asia IPM hub lead, with the veteran broker continuing to be based in Singapore. He will succeed Daniel Whitmore, who left Cushman & Wakefield in July and has since joined Knight Frank in Singapore as head of corporate real estate for Asia Pacific.

In his previous position, Seaton assembled a team of 45 real estate professionals to form the APAC Portfolio Services Centre, which now manages over 10,000 leases involving more than 300 million square feet (27.87 million square metres) of space.

Seaton joined what was then DTZ in 2003 as associate director of corporate real estate management, working his way up to become director of global corporate services before the firm was acquired by TPG Capital in 2014 and merged into Cushman & Wakefield less than a year later.

In her new role, Hong Kong-based Koo will oversee Cushman’s Greater China IPM team and work with key occupier clients in the region.

Her career path includes eight years of experience in transaction management, occupier service delivery experience and workplace strategy. Koo previously worked at JP Morgan as a business analyst, later taking on leadership roles at Knight Frank before joining Cushman & Wakefield in 2018 as an associate director of the transaction management team.

Consultancy on the Rebound

Cushman & Wakefield’s leadership changes follow the company’s announcement last month that the group’s London-based president, John Forrester, would succeed Brett White as global chief executive on 1 January.

The same announcement highlighted the company’s second-quarter revenue of $2.2 billion, which represented a 29 percent increase from the same period last year.

The company’s new appointments to the global occupier services business in Asia are expected to pave the way for better collaborations between its teams in Greater China, in the region and across the globe. The firm currently has more than 400 offices worldwide, of which 22 are part of a network that serves Greater China’s local markets.