Douglas Harmon and Adam Spies

It’s hard to overstate the historic significance of the FDIC’s decision to hire Newmark’s capital markets team — led by Douglas Harmon and Adam Spies — to sell Signature Bank’s $60 billion loan portfolio after the Manhattan-based lender collapsed last March.

“Luck is the beneficiary of a prepared mind,” Harmon said.

Amid one of the worst years in commercial real estate sales volume nationally, the Signature Bank deal buoyed Newmark’s revenue and helped put the brokerage in a league of its own last year, with Harmon and Spies handling a staggering $70 billion in transaction volume during 2023. 

The deal “made 2023 one of the most successful yet unusual years in capital markets history,” Harmon said. 

Stakes in Signature’s $15 billion rent-stabilized loan portfolio ultimately sold in two pieces to Santander Bank and a joint venture between Community Preservation Corporation and Related Companies’ affordable housing arm, Related Fund Management, while a stake in its $17 billion loan pool tied to office, retail and market-rate rental properties went to Blackstone and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

The FDIC had a lot more in mind than merely finding the most competitive bids, including the maintenance and preservation of about 2,000 rent-stabilized buildings within the failed regional bank’s loan portfolio. That explains why the Related-backed partnership was triumphant despite offering 59 cents on the dollar for its stake in $5.8 billion worth of loans, according to the federal receiver.

Aside from that point of contention, Harmon and Spies, who brought their 20-person investment sales team to Newmark early last year after their contract at Cushman & Wakefield expired, also brokered the $550 million sale of Related Companies’ and Oxford Properties’ 20 Hudson Yards to Wells Fargo in September and arranged the sale of a 49 percent stake in One Liberty Plaza to Brookfield Properties for $490 million — two of the top New York City deals last year.

Newmark CEO Barry Gosin had tried to hire the duo when they departed Eastdil Secured back in 2016, but Harmon and Spies instead landed at Cushman & Wakefield.

Gosin had to wait seven long years for the pair to come knocking, and this time they brought a true golden goose with them as the brokers of the mandated sale of Signature Bank’s loan portfolio.