Cushman & Wakefield files for US IPO

San Francisco

CUSHMAN & Wakefield has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the US, saying it would use proceeds to reduce debt. The commercial real estate firm listed the amount of its offering in a filing on Wednesday as US$100 million.

Cushman & Wakefield, the owners of which include private equity firms TPG and PAG Asia Capital, said it will also use the IPO proceeds for general corporate purposes and for making deferred payments to employees who worked for Cassidy Turley, a brokerage that its predecessor agreed to buy in 2014, said the filing. Those payments represented a liability of US$112 million as at March 31.

The offering will be led by Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs Group and UBS Group.

Before the listing, Cushman & Wakefield will restructure from DTZ Jersey Holdings, which filed for the IPO, to a public limited company incorporated in England and Wales, to be named Cushman & Wakefield Plc.

Last year, Cushman & Wakefield had a net loss of US$221 million on revenue of US$6.9 billion.

In 2015, it merged with DTZ, a property services company that TPG, PAG Asia and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board purchased a year earlier from UGL, an Australian construction firm.Those three firms collectively own about 90 per cent of Cushman & Wakefield's outstanding shares. BLOOMBERG