Michael Colacino Leaving Savills Studley, Mitch Rudin to Replace as President
By Rey Mashayekhi September 10, 2018 6:25 pm
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Savills Studley President Michael Colacino is stepping down from his role after 27 years with the commercial real estate brokerage, which has tapped Mitchell Rudin—a former executive at CBRE (CBRE), Brookfield (BN) Property Partners and, most recently, Mack-Cali Realty Corp.—to succeed Colacino.
Colacino will depart the firm, where he has worked since 1991 and served as president since 2002, at the end of this year, Savills Studley announced today. Rudin is set to join the brokerage at the start of October before assuming the role of president on Jan. 1, 2019.
Along with Savills Studley Chairman and CEO Mitchell Steir, Colacino led an internal management takeover of the firm (then called Julien J. Studley Inc.) in 2002 that saw 45 Studley brokers buy out the founder, Julien Studley, and his partners. Colacino was subsequently appointed the president and for the past 16 years has overseen the day-to-day operations of Savills Studley, which changed its name after being acquired by London-based Savills for $260 million in 2014.
While he has spent most of his career on the brokerage side of the commercial real estate business, the 61-year-old Colacino—who for the first 10 years of his professional life worked as a systems designer—said he now plans to pivot into the realm of real estate technology and start his own proptech software firm.
“I’ve spent the last 30 years advocating for the application of software and analytics to real estate,” Colacino said in a statement. He added that it is “exciting to see those ideas acquiring enormous momentum in the industry” as proptech has assumed increased importance in the commercial real estate sector in recent years, and that he is “eager to combine my background in software with my experience managing broker operations to change and improve our industry.”
Steir described Colacino as “a fantastic partner in helping me acquire, lead and ultimately merge this outstanding organization,” and said Savills Studley’s success and growth over the past two decades “would not have been possible without his dedication, intellect and unwavering commitment to the firm and our clients.”
Steir added that he is “confident that in Mitch Rudin we have found the best possible candidate to replace Michael as president.”
Rudin spent more than two decades at CBRE and served as the CEO and president of the brokerage’s tri-state region from 2006 to 2011, when he left to become the CEO and president of U.S. commercial operations for Brookfield Office Properties (now Brookfield Property Partners)—a role he held until departing Brookfield in 2014.
In 2015, he was appointed CEO of New Jersey-based real estate investment trust Mack-Cali. Alongside then-President and COO Michael DeMarco, who joined Mack-Cali at the same time as Rudin, he was charged with revitalizing the suburban office-focused REIT’s fortunes after the departure of longtime president and CEO Mitchell Hersh. But Rudin and DeMarco did not see eye-to-eye on the company’s direction, and DeMarco was elevated to the role of CEO in 2017 while Rudin was made Mack-Cali’s vice chairman.
The 65-year-old Rudin stepped down from his position at Mack-Cali this June and is now returning to his brokerage roots as president of Savills Studley, which specializes in tenant representation and has 31 offices across the U.S. and Canada.
“I am thrilled to join the talented team at Savills Studley at this exciting stage in its evolution,” Rudin said in a statement. “Over the years, the firm has invested heavily in forward-thinking technology and has strengthened its professional teams both in the C-suite and across the country.”
Rudin also thanked Colacino “for his impressive service and immense contributions to the firm,” adding that he “look[s] forward to building upon the company’s achievements thus far in partnership with Mitch Steir and our board of directors.”
