Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated is an American commercial real estate services company. The company also provides investment management services worldwide, including services to institutional and retail investors, and to high-net-worth individuals. It is the second-largest company of its kind in the world. The company is ranked 189th on the Fortune 500.
Operations
JLL is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, and it is the second-largest public brokerage firm in the world. The company has approximately 91,000 employees in 80 countries, as of 2019. Services include sales and leasing, property management, project management, and development. In 2014, the organization shortened its name to JLL for marketing purposes, while the legal name remained Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. Former company president Christian Ulbrich succeeded Colin Dyer as CEO in October 2016. Stephanie Plaines was the CFO, as of March 2019. Sheila Penrose has served as board chairperson since 2005.
History
The company began as the result of a 1999 merger of Jones Lang Wootton and LaSalle Partners. Jones Lang Wootton was a London auctioneer that originated in the 1700s. By 1976, Jones Lang Wootton expanded into the United States real estate market in New York City. The company had 4,000 employees in 33 countries around the time of the merger with LaSalle Partners. William Sanders founded real estate companyInternational Development Corp in 1966 in El Paso, Texas. Sanders renamed the company LaSalle Partners in 1968 and relocated to Chicago, Illinois. The company first offered investment banking, investment management, and land services. By 1997, LaSalle had grown into three business divisions, Management Services, Corporate and Financial Services, and Investment Management, with ten U.S. corporate offices and seven international offices. LaSalle Partners made an initial public offering in 1996. LaSalle Partners and Jones Lang Wootton merged to form Jones Lang LaSalle in 1999 in a $435 million deal. JLL purchased The Staubach Company in 2008. Roger Staubach served as executive chairman of JLL from 2008 until he retired in 2018. JLL merged with UK-based King Sturge in a £197 million deal in 2011. The combined business, with 2,700 employees and 43 offices, created the largest property agent in the UK, as reported by The Telegraph in 2011. The company acquired UK-based Guardian Property Asset Management in 2015. LaSalle Investment Management, a subsidiary of JLL, managed $58 billion in real estate investments for institutional and retail clients, as of 2016. JLL had acquired 80 companies and established 100 offices worldwide by 2016. The company expanded from commercial real estate services to include property technology or "proptech", with the 2017 launch of its JLL Spark division. In early 2018, the division acquired Stessa, a portfolio management company. In June 2018, JLL Spark created a $100 million venture fund to invest in real estate start-ups, such as a technology to link office users with co-working spaces. JLL announced the acquisition of HFF in a deal worth $2 billion in March 2019. The acquisition was completed in July 2019 and worth $1.8 billion.
