Michelle MacKay, Andrew McDonald, Bruce Mosler and Toby Dodd

With a presence in over 60 countries and an employee count totaling 52,000, one must use global terms when speaking about a brokerage like Cushman & Wakefield, even if 2023 was a more difficult year for the company than usual.

Cushman recorded an eye-watering $9.5 billion in revenue last year — an extraordinary sum, to be sure, particularly when compared to the $4.2 billion reported by the company less than nine years ago in 2015. Yet it’s still a drop of 6 percent from the $10.1 billion it posted in 2022, as market conditions drove a dip in its leasing and valuation businesses, not to mention capital markets revenues. 

That fact is not lost on Cushman’s leadership suite, which has cycled through three CEOs in as many years. Enter Michelle MacKay, who has known executive leadership at Cushman only during relative wartime, being named global COO in March 2020 just as the COVID-19 pandemic materialized. A few weeks after MacKay took over as CEO in July of last year, Cushman refinanced $1.4 billion of debt set to mature by 2025. She has since helmed an aggressive strategy of reallocating capital and keenly evaluating the company’s balance sheet to plug holes in its various business lines. 

Toby Dodd, Cushman’s New York-area head, is a staunch believer in MacKay’s tactics. Although the firm doesn’t expect sustained growth until interest rates drop, according to its fourth-
quarter earnings report last year, Dodd still sees a swell of momentum and demand in core asset markets — particularly in premium office space, an area where Cushman has fared better than its peers in recent months and one in which Bruce Mosler plays a major hand. 

Dodd pointed to the recent example of Vornado Realty Trust’s exclusive enlistment of C&W in January 2024 to market its Penn 2, a behemoth 1.8 million-square-foot office tower in Midtown Manhattan. That trust has already paid off for both firms, as Major League Soccer opted earlier this spring to expand its footprint (or cleat-print) with a 126,000-square-foot relocation to the building. 

“[After] 23 years at Cushman & Wakefield, I’ve never felt more energized and positive about the future of the firm now under both Michelle’s leadership and the plan that she’s outlined, and also Andrew [McDonald’s] leadership,” Dodd said. “The positive momentum within the firm is palpable right now.”