Just for info In his first interview since taking office in March, Cushman & Wakefield CEO Glenn Rufrano tells James Whitmore how he will revive its fortunes The Italian Agnelli family, famous for their investments in carmaker Fiat and football club Juventus, have had a less successful foray in property services. Their $625m purchase in March 2007 of a 71% stake in Cushman & Wakefield, one of the three global property services powerhouses, was unfortunately timed, coming just a few months before the credit crunch began. Through their company, Exor, the Agnellis have incurred around $80m of losses from their investment. When they embarked in the middle of last year on a search for a new chief executive to succeed Bruce Mosler, they were looking for someone with experience, a great management track record and, for the first time in Cushman�s 92-year history, an outsider. The person they appointed was Glenn Rufrano, a 60-year-old who fitted the brief almost perfectly. After five years in the late 1970s and early 1980sat US agency Landauer Associates, Rufrano moved to the principal side, co-founding O�Connor Group in New York, where he built up assets under management from zero to $7.5bn. Excel spreadsheet In 2000 he left to take charge of US REIT New Plan Excel Trust, which he turned into a retail-focused company and then sold for $3.7bn in early 2007 to Australian shopping centre owner Centro. After the sale, he stayed with Centro as head of the US arm. He then moved to Melbourne in January 2008 to take on the top job at Centro, when financial problems caused by the debt the company took on to buy New Plan forced his predecessor, Andrew Scott, to resign. Against huge odds, he kept Centro afloat, by restructuring its $18bn of debt before deciding to leave and return home to New York. �Certainly, my experience with Centro and New Plan and, before that O�Connor, was a combination background, where I�d been involved in building up and managing businesses, so my background and what they were looking for matched in many respects.� Having lived through cycles was important and being a principal and an agent in my earlier life.� When Cushman announced Rufrano�s appointment in February, it was a surprise to many that a real estate principal would move to the services side. Normally, it is the other way round. He says he could have stayed as a principal at General Growth Properties, the US�s second-largest shopping centre owner, which was emerging from chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. �But I concluded that I�d rather at this point of time in the cycle not be a principal, and one of the reasons is that I think it will be very difficult to make entrepreneurial profits,� he explains. �I have a hard time thinking that, over the next 36 months, given where we are in the cycle, that opportunity will be there. �If you look at the transaction side of the business, however, I do believe that over the next 36 months there will be activity, in part driven by the private market recognition that ownership is, in many cases, in the hands of the lender, regardless of who has title � and there�ll be transfer.�
CER Price at posting:
16.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
