Real estate firm signs 10-year deal at 155 N. Wacker
(Crain's) — The real estate investment banking and advisory firm M3 Capital Partners LLC has signed a 10-year lease for 27,115 square feet for its headquarters at 155 N. Wacker Drive, the new tower being built by John Buck Co.
M3 Capital, previously known as Macquarie Capital Partners LLC, will occupy the entire 18th floor at 155 N. Wacker. The lease begins in January 2010, but the firm could get in as early as fall 2009 — several months after the building opens — if its space is finished in time, says Jock Howland, a managing director with Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., who represented M3 Capital.
The company currently occupies 16,826 square feet at UBS Tower, 1 N. Wacker, alongside Macquarie Real Estate, the U.S. real estate arm of Australia-based Macquarie Bank. An M3 Capital spokeswoman confirms the new lease but declines further comment.
M3 Capital was spun off by Macquarie in December 2006. M3 Capital, headed by Donald Suter, has completed more than $75 billion worth of capital-raising and advisory transactions since its founding in 1991 as Security Capital Markets Group. That firm combined with Macquarie to form Macquarie Capital Partners in 2001.
A local Macquarie spokeswoman says the move was planned when the firm was spun off, and that Macquarie is growing here and will take over the space in the UBS Tower that M3 Capital is vacating.
M3 Capital, which also has offices in New York and London, is to move its headquarters this December into temporary office space in the Sears Tower, where the firm has a one-year lease, before moving into the new building.
"This gives them a little more space to grow into and sets them up for the next 10 years," says Drew Nieman, a principal with Chicago-based Buck.
The new tower is now more than 50% leased, Mr. Nieman says. He wouldn't comment on reports that Buck is negotiating with Ernst & Young U.S. LLP, which is considering a move from the Sears Tower, where the accounting firm's lease expires in 2012. Ernst & Young is the largest tenant at Sears Tower, with 387,360 square feet.
