The international property group CB Richard Ellis is to pay $24.6 million (€20 million) for complete control of the Dublin commercial estate agency firm CBRE Gunne.
The Los Angeles-based group, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, has owned 10 per cent of the Irish company for the past six years.
The Gunne family, including managing director Pat Gunne, will be the main beneficiaries of the sale, which does not include the residential side of the business. The company structure will remain in place, with Pat Gunne continuing as managing director.
The deal values CBRE Gunne in excess of €30 million. The company will now be known as CB Richard Ellis in line with the worldwide brand.
CBRE Gunne, which employs 105 people in Dublin and Belfast, is the largest commercial property agency in Ireland with projected fee income this year of €18 million.
The Gunne family owns about 70 per cent of the company. Seven executive directors - Ronan Webster, Willie Dowling, Caroline McCarthy, Marie Hunt, Seán O'Brien, Enda Luddy and Cormac Kennedy - share the remaining 30 per cent.
The sale, which will come as a surprise to the Dublin property market, follows the rapid growth of the business which is shortly to relocate from its Ballsbridge offices to a new HQ on Burlington Road.
CBRE Gunne has been a major beneficiary of the increasing trend for Irish investors to purchase commercial property abroad because of the scarcity of investments at home. Irish investors are now among the most active in Europe, having acquired nearly $6 billion (€4.9 billion) in property in 15 EU countries in 2004, according to CBRE Gunne research.
The company has been involved with the largest of these deals, including the €1.13 billion purchase of the Savoy hotel group in London last year. The agency also handled the recent agreement to sell the Jurys hotel site in Ballsbridge for €260 million, subject to shareholder approval.
The sale of the business is a major success for Pat Gunne who was forced to take over the running of the agency at the age of 25 on the death of his father, Fintan Gunne, in 1997. Fintan Gunne, who originally ran the family cattle sales yard in Co Monaghan, later set up an estate agency business. He was the first provincial estate agency to break into the competitive Dublin market.