Denver’s queen of commercial real estate investment is on the move.
Mary Sullivan is teaming up with John Jugl at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) to build the brokerage’s capital markets business.
A former executive vice president at CB Richard Ellis (CBRE), Sullivan has been talking with Jugl for months about combining forces. They were courted by Dallas-based HFF, a capital markets intermediary that wanted them to open a Denver office.
In the end, they decided it made more sense for Sullivan to join Jugl at JLL. At JLL they will be involved in creating ways to finance deals.
“It is exciting to join a team that is very dynamic,” said Sullivan, who has handled more than $7 billion in transactions throughout her career. “JLL is No. 1 in corporate services internationally. They have a phenomenal international platform.”
Sullivan began her commercial real estate career in 1981 with Coldwell Banker, which eventually became CB Richard Ellis. She did stints with Cushman & Wakefield and Trammell Crow Co. before returning to CBRE in 2002.
Jugl, whose focus has been international transactions, said that with Sullivan as his partner, he has agreed to concentrate on doing deals in Denver.
“Most of my (sales of investment properties) work has always been out of the Denver market,” Jugl said. “About a year ago, we really made a concerted effort to change it.”
Jugl, who has an investment banking background, got into real estate in 2001.
“He has a really strong financial vision in creating corporate balance sheet solutions,” said Barry Dorfman, market director of JLL’s Denver office. “He comes from an investment banking background, which gives him great insight into how occupiers drive values in properties. Mary’s got a finance and accounting background. You’ve got two great skill sets and they really are complementary skill sets.”
In the nearly two years since JLL merged with Staubach, the company has been beefing up its Denver presence.
Last spring, the company added two industrial brokers: Peter Beugg and Tyler Reed.
This month, the company’s Denver office has added Greg Hartmann to its hotel group; and Jeffrey Todd and Lisa Walker to its project and development services team. Dorfman also recently hired Scott Latimer for JLL’s health care group, where he expects to make additional hires.
“The overall plan is to be the best in many different business lines,” Dorfman said. “I’m putting the right people on board. We want to be in the top three in all of our business lines.”
Meanwhile, Sullivan’s former teammates at CBRE are streamlining their business within the company.
“This is a terrific opportunity for CB to unify our capital markets team as one and to work uniformly with Eric Tupler and his debt and equity finance group along with me and our other investment brokers, Ron Urgitus, Geoff Baukol and Brad Lyons,” said Tim Swan, executive vice president in CBRE’s investment group. “This more unified team will allow us to provide deeper, better and broader service to our clients.”
Margaret Jackson: 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com
