CBRE Group history

By 1912, much of San Francisco had been rebuilt and the city was again flourishing, as was the firm of Tucker, Lynch & Coldwell.

1914 – Benjamin Banker joins Coldwell’s as a full partner trading as Coldwell Banker.

Louis Pfau, another fraternity brother from UC-Berkeley who had joined the firm in 1915, was also made a partner, bringing the number to five.

When the United States entered the conflict in 1917, the firm, still known as Tucker, Lynch & Coldwell, embarked on its first non-real estate business venture--growing rice for the war effort on land it purchased in the Sacramento Valley.

The rice farm was a failure, and in 1919, the partners, which then included Albert E. Kerns, vowed never again to invest in a venture outside real estate.

In 1922, Marshall Hale, a San Francisco businessman, purchased the Spring Arcade Building in Los Angeles.

The firm also continued to expand in the San Francisco Bay area, including the company's first office in Oakland, which opened in 1925.

By 1927, the Spring Arcade office was doing so well that Hastings, who had been Coldwell's college fraternity brother at the University of California at Berkeley, was invited to buy into the partnership for $90,000.

By 1928, Coldwell, Cornwell & Banker had opened a second office in Los Angeles.

When the stock market crashed in 1929, plunging the nation into the Great Depression, three of the partners, Coldwell, Cornwall, and Banker, were wealthy men and relatively unaffected.

In 1933, Coldwell, Cornwall & Banker also formed a subsidiary, Home Properties Co., Inc., and purchased 60 acres in the Rancho Santa Anita area of Los Angeles County for $18,000.

1936 – US name change to Coldwell, Banker and Company.

The Ellis family continuously ran and expanded the firm until 1938.

In 1939, Coldwell, Cornwall & Banker signed an exclusive agreement to originate and service mortgage loans in California for Aetna Life Insurance Company.

Cornwall resigned as partner in 1940, and the company was renamed Coldwell, Banker & Co, which was eventually shortened to Coldwell Banker.

As the firm grew, so did the number of partners, to an even dozen by 1952, when one of the latest, Dan Duggan, finally convinced the others, who ranged in age from 38 to 70, that they needed a written partnership agreement.

Banker, then 75, suffered a heart attack in 1960.

In 1961, the Los Angeles partners asked a longtime client, Al Steffey, of Butler Bros. stores, to review the firm's books.

You're nice idiots, but you're idiots." Coldwell Banker was incorporated on July 1, 1963.

1965 – Richard Ellis forms Australian partnership.

Banker died two years later, at the age of 80, followed by the passing of Pfau, also 80, and Coldwell, 84, in 1967.

After Coldwell's death, the company formed its first executive committee, but it was not until 1969 that the committee's powers were fully expanded to "manage the business and affairs of the corporation." By then, Coldwell Banker also had expanded to Nevada and Texas.

Coldwell Banker began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in 1971.

By 1973, Coldwell Banker had offices in seven western states and in Atlanta, Georgia.

Revenues for fiscal 1980 topped $300 million.

In 1981, Coldwell Banker was acquired by Sears.

1982 – Sears, Roebuck & Co acquires Coldwell Banker Commercial and Residential.

Surveys in 1987 indicated that 30 percent of the public purchased some sort of financial service from the retail giant, compared with 11 percent for American Express.

The next major milestone occurred in 1989 when employees and others acquired the company's operations from Sears to form CB Commercial.

Insignia had been founded in December 1990 by Andrew Farkas, then just 30 years old.

Although it was easily the country's largest commercial broker, it had a negative net worth of $56 million in mid-1991.

In 1992, the company was rocked further when a jury in Orlando, Florida awarded $8.5 million to the former owner of an office complex who accused CB Commercial, his leasing agent, of fraud for negotiating a lease for his largest tenant with another office complex.

By 1994, CB Commercial had revenues of $452 million and a net profit of barely $4 million.

One strong challenge was expected to come from Coldwell Banker Corp., purchased in 1996 by HFS, Inc., which also owned Century 21 and several motel and car-rental chains.

In 1997, the company acquired Koll Real Estate Services for $145 million.

London-based Hiller Parker May & Rowden was acquired by CBRE later in 1998.

1999: Japanese operations are merged with Ikoma Corporation; Sweden's Profit Group and Chile's LirAntunez Propiedades are acquired.

By 2000, CBRE had revenues of $1.3 billion.

In 2001, CB Richard Ellis was acquired in a leveraged buyout by an investment group led by Blum Capital in an $800 million transaction.

In 2003, the company acquired Insignia Financial Group for $415 million.

In June 2004, CBRE began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

2005 – CBRE debuts on the Fortune 1000 list.

In late 2006, CBRE merged with Trammell Crow Company in a transaction valued at $2.2 billion.

2011 – For the tenth year running CBRE voted as the premier global brand in real estate by the 2011 Lipsey Company Brand survey.

In 2013 the company acquired Norland Managed Services, a facilities, energy and project management provider in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

2015 – In 2015, CBRE was ranked #2 (out of 500 companies) in financial growth and performance by Barron’s.

CBRE UKRAINE WON THE V EE REAL ESTATE FORUM & PROJECT AWARD 2018 AND BECAME THE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT COMPANY OF THE YEAR

In 2019, the group acquired the London developer Telford Homes.

12.11.2020 Hybrid Office: At the Crossroads of Digital and Physical