Big churn at global real-estate consultancies JLL India and C&W

International property consultancies are witnessing a lot of churn among senior executives.
 
At JLL India, after its chairman Anuj Puri quit last year, Santosh Kumar, chief executive officer-operations, and Shobhit Agarwal, managing director-capital markets, also stepped down recently.
 
After quitting, Puri had set up his own firm Anarock Property Consultants. He had bought out the residential business of JLL, and about 200 brokers from JLL had joined him. Since then, he has set up a team of 1,000 executives.
 

While Kumar joined Anarock as vice-chairman, Agarwal said on Wednesday he had set up his own property-focused invest banking firm ANB Capital Advisors. JLL has also hired some high-profile names, and another three to four senior executives are expected to join the consultancy, sources said. Juggy Marwah, lead at co-working space provider WeWork, quit recently to join JLL as managing director. JLL also hired Tanvi Choksi as head of HR from Johnson & Johnson.

 
Ramesh Nair, country head and chief executive officer at JLL India, had said last year that the firm had recruited a record number of 47 directors and leaders. “Of these, 22 came from competing firms,” Nair said. “Indian real estate is going through a mixed-bag phase, with commercial realty, investments, and services performing moderately well, and residential sales seemingly sluggish. Being India’s premier real estate consulting firm, this situation has ensured multiple opportunities across various services and client segments – all of which create more growth factors and vacancies for infusion of senior leaders and talent to oversee and leverage these opportunities,” Nair said.

 
Another US-based consultancy Cushman & Wakefield saw many senior executives quitting after its former managing director Sanjay Dutt quit in 2016 to join Singapore-based Ascendas Singbridge. Manish Aggarwal, managing director, north and east India at Cushman & Wakefield, joined JLL as managing director, north and east India. Naveen Nandwani, executive director at Cushman & Wakefield, joined JLL as regional managing director, Bangalore and Kochi.
 
A spokesperson for Cushman & Wakefield said that during 2017, they hired over 30 senior executives, including five managing director-level positions. “Our focus on building a strong team is evident from the fact that we had zero senior leadership attrition in the past two quarters,” the spokesperson said.

 
“Cushman & Wakefield is poised for an extremely strong performance in 2018, and we will continue to build a diverse talent pool which is the key to our success and growth in India.”

In 2017, there was a significant fall in new residential launches across top seven cities. Launches declined by 45-50 per cent compared to the previous year. While in 2016 the top seven cities had added around 240,000 units, new launches shrunk to only 125,000 units in 2017, according to Anarock.

However, office market remained strong with a volume of 42.8 million sq ft in 2017 compared to an absorption level of 41.6 million sq ft in 2016. Last week, Sotheby’s International Realty appointed four senior professionals to its Indian operations — Sudershan Sharma as director and business head for Mumbai operations, Arun Chadda as director for business development, Pradeep Malhotra as director business development, and Aishwarya Misra as senior vice-president.