Item 1. Business.

Company Overview

CBRE is the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investments firm. Our competitive advantage comes from our considerable scale and ability to offer integrated solutions to real estate investors and occupiers in more than 100 countries. We are global market leaders in most lines of business we serve and drive significant growth from bundling these services, while helping our clients optimize real estate costs, value, investment returns and workplace experiences. These capabilities, combined with our extensive research and data platform, allow us to generate superior outcomes for our clients, which include nearly 90% of Fortune 100 companies in 2023, and many of the world’s largest institutional real estate investors.

The future growth opportunity across our company is enhanced by the large and expanding base of commercial real estate assets globally. We are focused on cementing our leadership position in each of our businesses with a strategy that achieves diversification and growth across four dimensions: geographies, clients, property types and services. We are committed to deploying our resources and capital across these four dimensions in parts of our business that have secular tailwinds and/or provide cyclical resilience. Examples of this include our recent investments in the global project management firm, Turner & Townsend, and the flexible office platform, Industrious, as well as increased focus on geographies that are well positioned for growth, such as Japan and asset classes such as industrial and multi-family. As a result, we have built a large and more resilient services offering. Our platform – the resources and infrastructure that support our professionals and underpin our growth, such as research, marketing, data and technology – combined with our balance sheet strength, provide us access to top talent and compelling growth opportunities.

Business Segments

We serve clients through three business segments: Advisory Services, Global Workplace Solutions and Real Estate Investments, and a fourth segment, called Corporate and other, which encompasses our platform and non-core investments.

Advisory Services

Advisory Services provides a comprehensive range of services globally, including property leasing; capital markets, which includes property sales and mortgage origination; mortgage servicing; property management and valuation. With a global network of experts that have a deep understanding of their local markets, we offer comprehensive insights and solutions across a wide range of real estate assets. Our client base is comprised of large occupiers and investors who contract for our services across multi-market portfolios as well as local market clients that we serve on a one-off basis.

We are leaders in each of our five primary business lines globally (property leasing, capital markets, mortgage servicing, property management and valuation) and in most key local markets across the world. We leverage our platform to attract and retain top talent as well as provide differentiated insights to our clients through our at-scale investments in research, data, technology tools and property marketing. We also focus on serving clients end-to-end through the intentional bundling of our various services. For example, as our investor clients seek to optimize the value and performance of their assets across the real estate lifecycle, we often bring together expertise from property sales, mortgage originations, leasing, valuations and property management. While many of our business lines in this segment are sensitive to changes in macro-economic conditions, their cyclicality is partly offset by the value investors and occupiers place on our insights and consulting services through cycles as they adjust their real estate portfolios and strategies in response to changing market circumstances. In contrast, our loan servicing, property management and valuations businesses, while a smaller part of our revenue mix, have proven to be more resilient than property sales, mortgage originations and leasing through periods of economic slowdown. For example, in the last five years, we have organically grown our loan servicing revenue at a low double digit compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and revenue in both property management and valuations at a mid-single digit CAGR, despite challenging macroeconomic conditions. We remain committed to growing these resilient business lines further, particularly where there are clear and sustained demand tailwinds.

Global Workplace Solutions

Global Workplace Solutions (GWS) is the leading global provider of integrated facilities management and project management solutions for major occupiers of commercial real estate. This segment benefits from multiple tailwinds, most notably multi-national corporations’ increased desire to outsource and consolidate real estate services to optimize costs, operational efficiencies and workplace experiences. We serve, typically through multi-year contracts, large global corporations including many Fortune 500 firms through our GWS Enterprise business as well as smaller occupiers with more localized portfolios through our GWS Local business.

With facilities management experts in more than 100 countries, we perform mission-critical technical services and maintenance in more locations worldwide than any other provider. This allows us to deliver tailored property solutions at both a local and global level, while increasing quality and experience, reducing cost and mitigating risk. We provide these services across virtually all asset types including offices, retail outlets, laboratories, data centers, manufacturing environments, warehouses and mission-critical facilities. We achieve growth by investing in (a) superior talent and processes that deliver account excellence; (b) capabilities to perform a wide range of technical services in-house that increase our clients’ real estate operational efficiency and reliability while reducing carbon emissions and lowering costs; (c) proprietary technology and data solutions that allow us to amass data at scale and deliver actionable insights to clients for managing complex challenges; and (d) ongoing acquisition activity, including larger companies such as Norland Managed Services, which marked our entry into the local facilities management space, and the Johnson Controls Global Workplace Solutions business, which substantially scaled our core enterprise facilities management business, as well as numerous in-fill transactions.

Our project management business, which encompasses CBRE’s wholly-owned services and those delivered by our majority-owned subsidiary Turner & Townsend, delivers program management, project management, and cost consultancy services across commercial real estate, infrastructure and natural resources sectors. With our combined capabilities, we are a leading global, full-service building consulting, program, project and cost management provider, completing nearly 65,000 projects/programs and managing nearly $2.9 trillion in capital spend annually. We manage a wide range of programs and projects from small repairs/refurbishments in corporate facilities to massive infrastructure projects such as airports and power stations. We also increasingly serve clients for net-zero program management and energy and sustainability solutions. Our scale, highly diverse capabilities and technology investments in this business allow us to solve our clients’ and industry’s biggest challenges in managing capital projects around the world.

Real Estate Investments

Real Estate Investments (REI) is a large real assets developer, investor and operator. This segment is comprised of two businesses: investment management and real estate development.

With more than $145 billion (as of December 31, 2023) in assets under management, CBRE Investment Management (IM) is one of the leading investment platforms in global real assets. The growth opportunity in this business is enhanced by investors’ growing appetite for investment alternatives, including real estate, that diversify their holdings and offer the potential for higher returns compared to traditional investment strategies. Much like other parts of our company, IM is diversified across many dimensions – investment strategies, sectors, geographies, risk profiles and execution formats. IM invests capital on behalf of pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, and other institutional investors in real estate, infrastructure, master limited partnerships and other assets. We often hold a co-investment in many of our investment funds and programs. Our primary investment categories include private direct real estate, private indirect real estate through third-party operators, listed real assets and private infrastructure.

Our real estate development business – Trammell Crow Company (TCC) in the U.S., U.K., and Continental Europe, and Telford Homes in the U.K. multifamily residential market – provides leading-edge development services to real estate investors, owners and occupiers. TCC has been the largest commercial developer in the U.S. for the last ten years and has a track record of developing best-in-class buildings across multiple property sectors in top-tier markets across the U.S. and Europe. Our portfolio represents a diversified mix of projects that we either own 100% or participate economically via co-investment with strategic capital partners as well as fee-based developments, such as built-to-suit projects. Our in-process portfolio and pipeline totaled nearly $30 billion (as of December 31, 2023) and spanned industrial, office, multifamily residential, retail, life sciences and healthcare properties. We have a track record of generating high investment returns for the company and our capital partners and our conservative, risk-mitigated capital structures enable us to time asset dispositions when market circumstances are most favorable.

We drive growth in this segment by: (a) enabling REI’s real-time access to the broader CBRE global brand, boots-on-the-ground market intelligence, and IM’s and TCC’s own investments in research/data that enable them to identify early and invest in secularly favored markets/products with tailwinds; (b) leveraging CBRE’s balance sheet to create opportunities for co-investment alongside our investor clients in our fund vehicles and developments; and (c) benefiting from the strong and continued partnership between IM and TCC.

Corporate and Other Segment

The Corporate and other segment houses most costs associated with our platform – the resources and infrastructure that support our professionals and support our growth – that are not allocated to the client-facing business segments, including corporate leadership costs. We believe the platform – ranging from research to marketing to data/technology to procurement and more – is a distinct advantage because of the level of resources and investment that our scale and financial strength allow us to make in these areas. In this segment, we also account for the value of our investments in non-core, non-controlling equity investments.

Competitive Positioning

Because of the range of services we provide and numerous markets we serve, we encounter a wide variety of competitors, including a handful of globally diversified real estate services firms that are well-established but smaller than CBRE, as well as many business-line-specific specialists that operate in various geographies. Despite this competition, we are the market leaders in most of our business lines, with significant opportunities for continued growth. These opportunities result from clients highly valuing our scale, depth of expertise, technology and data-led insights, as well as their increasing preference for consolidating the number of service providers, which plays to our advantage in delivering integrated solutions globally. Our large balance sheet enables significant investments in our platform, market-leading talent recruitment and transformational M&A execution.

Human Capital

People are at the center of our business strategy. We have learning & development programs designed to help our professionals succeed and develop future leaders, including: webinars, live virtual and in-person training, self-paced digital learning, coaching, mentoring and on-the-job learning. We also reward our people with competitive pay and benefits, foster an engaging and inclusive workplace, and improve productivity through investments in technology, tools and resources.

At December 31, 2023, we had more than 130,000 employees (including Turner & Townsend employees) worldwide, of which 34.5% are female and 65.5% are male. The costs associated with approximately 62% of our people are fully reimbursed by clients and are mainly in our Global Workplace Solutions and property management businesses. At December 31, 2023, approximately 14% of our employees worldwide were subject to collective bargaining agreements.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I)

We are committed to increasing the diversity of our workforce, strengthening an inclusive culture where everyone is valued and supported in achieving their full potential, and investing in the communities where we live and work. These efforts are led by our Chief Culture Officer, a senior executive level position reporting directly to our Chief Executive Officer, and include collaborating with partners to increase outreach to and help develop diverse talent, organizing internal events to foster belonging and building a diverse talent pool and interview process. We spent nearly $2 billion with diverse suppliers in 2023, with a goal to lift that annual spend to $3 billion by the end of 2025. Also, we made significant financial contributions to nonprofit organizations that are helping to improve education and career development opportunities for people in diverse and underrepresented communities. We publicly report demographics, including diversity data, for our U.S. workforce annually in our Corporate Responsibility Report, in accordance with reporting requirements by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Intellectual Property

We hold various trademarks and trade names worldwide, including the “CBRE,” “Turner & Townsend” and “Telford” marks. We believe the “CBRE” and “Trammell Crow Company” marks are vitally important in maintaining our leadership position. We hold a license to use the “Trammell Crow Company” trade name pursuant to a license agreement with CF98, L.P., an affiliate of Crow Realty Investors, L.P., d/b/a Crow Holdings, which may be revoked if we fail to satisfy usage and quality control covenants under the license agreement. We also hold a number of issued and pending patent applications relating to proprietary technologies, and intend to file additional patent applications reflecting our commitment to technology and innovation.

Material Governmental Matters

Environment

Certain federal, state and local laws and regulations may impose liability on current or previous real property owners or operators for the cost of investigating, cleaning up or removing contamination caused by hazardous or toxic substances at a property. If contamination is present during our role as a property or facility manager or developer, we could be held liable for such costs as a current “operator” of a property, regardless of the legality of the acts or omissions that caused the contamination and without regard to whether we knew of, or were responsible for, the presence of such hazardous or toxic substances. Further, federal, state and local governments in various countries have enacted various laws, regulations and treaties governing climate change, particularly for “greenhouse gas emissions” which seek to tax, penalize or limit their release. Such regulations could lead to increased operational or compliance costs over time. We are not aware of any material noncompliance with the environmental laws or regulations currently applicable to us, and we are not the subject of any material claim for liability with respect to contamination at any location. However, these laws and regulations may discourage sales and leasing activities and mortgage lending with respect to some properties, which may adversely affect us. Environmental contamination or other environmental liabilities may also negatively affect the value of commercial real estate assets held by entities that are managed by our investment management and development services businesses.

Environmental Sustainability

We have developed measurable environmental and sustainability goals for 2035, grounded in science and an assessment of where our operations have the most significant potential to impact on the environment, as well as the areas where we can most effectively mitigate that impact. These include a goal to reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions 68% from the 2019 base year. Additional information about our approach to corporate social responsibility and to environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues is available in the CBRE Corporate Responsibility Report. The contents of our website and Corporate Responsibility Report are referenced for general information only and are not incorporated in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Available Information

In this Annual Report on Form 10-K, we use the terms “CBRE,” “we,” the “company,” “our,” and “us” to refer to CBRE Group, Inc. and all of its consolidated subsidiaries, unless otherwise indicated or the context requires otherwise. Our Annual Report on Form 10-K (Annual Report), Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, Proxy Statements and amendments to those reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act), are available on the Investor Relations section of our website (https://ir.cbre.com/) as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file such material with, or furnish it to, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). We also make available through our website other reports filed with or furnished to the SEC under the Exchange Act, including reports filed by our officers and directors under Section 16(a) of the Exchange Act. All of the information on our Investor Relations website is available to be viewed free of charge. The SEC maintains a website (https://www.sec.gov) that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC.

Our website (https://www.cbre.com) contains information concerning us. We routinely use our website as a channel of distribution for our information, including financial and other material information. Information contained on our website is not part of this Annual Report or our other filings with the SEC. We have included the web addresses of the company and the SEC as inactive textual references only. Except as specifically incorporated by reference into this document, information on these websites is not part of this document.

Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements

This Annual Report contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the Securities Act) and Section 21E of the Exchange Act. The words “anticipate,” “believe,” “could,” “should,” “propose,” “continue,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “predict,” “project,” “will,” “forecast,” “target” and similar terms and phrases are used in this Annual Report to identify forward-looking statements. Except for historical information contained herein, the matters addressed in this Annual Report are forward-looking statements. These statements relate to analyses and other information based on forecasts of future results and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. These statements also relate to our future prospects, developments and business strategies.

These forward-looking statements are made based on our management’s expectations and beliefs concerning future events affecting us and are subject to uncertainties and factors relating to our operations and business environment, all of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond our control. These uncertainties and factors could cause our actual results to differ materially from those matters expressed in or implied by these forward-looking statements.

The following factors are among those, but are not only those, that may cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements:

• disruptions in general economic, political and regulatory conditions and significant public health events, particularly in geographies or industry sectors where our business may be concentrated;

• volatility or adverse developments in the securities, capital or credit markets, interest rate increases and conditions affecting the value of real estate assets, inside and outside the U.S.;

• poor performance of real estate investments or other conditions that negatively impact clients’ willingness to make real estate or long-term contractual commitments and the cost and availability of capital for investment in real estate;

• foreign currency fluctuations and changes in currency restrictions, trade sanctions and import/export and transfer pricing rules;

• our ability to compete globally, or in specific geographic markets or business segments that are material to us;

• our ability to identify, acquire and integrate accretive businesses;

• costs and potential future capital requirements relating to businesses we may acquire;

• integration challenges arising out of companies we may acquire;

• increases in unemployment and general slowdowns in commercial activity;

• trends in pricing and risk assumption for commercial real estate services;

• the effect of significant changes in capitalization rates across different property types;

• a reduction by companies in their reliance on outsourcing for their commercial real estate needs, which would affect our revenues and operating performance;

• client actions to restrain project spending and reduce outsourced staffing levels;

• our ability to further diversify our revenue model to offset cyclical economic trends in the commercial real estate industry;

• our ability to attract new user and investor clients;

• our ability to retain major clients and renew related contracts;

• our ability to leverage our global services platform to maximize and sustain long-term cash flow;

• our ability to continue investing in our platform and client service offerings;

• our ability to maintain expense discipline;

• the emergence of disruptive business models and technologies;

• negative publicity or harm to our brand and reputation;

• the failure by third parties to comply with service level agreements or regulatory or legal requirements;

• the ability of our investment management business to maintain and grow assets under management and achieve desired investment returns for our investors, and any potential related litigation, liabilities or reputational harm possible if we fail to do so;

• our ability to manage fluctuations in net earnings and cash flow, which could result from poor performance in our investment programs, including our participation as a principal in real estate investments;

• the ability of CBRE Capital Markets to periodically amend, or replace, on satisfactory terms, the agreements for its warehouse lines of credit;

• declines in lending activity of U.S. GSEs, regulatory oversight of such activity and our mortgage servicing revenue from the commercial real estate mortgage market;

• changes in U.S. and international law and regulatory environments (including relating to anti-corruption, anti-money laundering, trade sanctions, tariffs, currency controls and other trade control laws), particularly in Asia, Africa, Russia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, due to the level of political instability in those regions;

• litigation and its financial and reputational risks to us;

• our exposure to liabilities in connection with real estate advisory and property management activities and our ability to procure sufficient insurance coverage on acceptable terms;

• our ability to retain, attract and incentivize key personnel;

• our ability to manage organizational challenges associated with our size;

• liabilities under guarantees, or for construction defects, that we incur in our development services business;

• our leverage under our debt instruments as well as the limited restrictions therein on our ability to incur additional debt, and the potential increased borrowing costs to us from a credit-ratings downgrade;

• our and our employees’ ability to execute on, and adapt to, information technology strategies and trends;

• cybersecurity threats or other threats to our information technology networks, including the potential misappropriation of assets or sensitive information, corruption of data or operational disruption;

• our ability to comply with laws and regulations related to our global operations, including real estate licensure, tax, labor and employment laws and regulations, fire and safety building requirements and regulations, as well as data privacy and protection regulations, ESG matters, and the anti-corruption laws and trade sanctions of the U.S. and other countries;

• changes in applicable tax or accounting requirements;

• any inability for us to implement and maintain effective internal controls over financial reporting;

• the effect of implementation of new accounting rules and standards or the impairment of our goodwill and intangible assets;

• the performance of our equity investments in companies we do not control; and

• the other factors described elsewhere in this Annual Report, included under the headings “Risk Factors,” “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Critical Accounting Policies and Estimates,” “Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk” or as described in the other documents and reports we file with the SEC.

Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date the statements are made. You should not put undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. We assume no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting forward-looking information, except to the extent required by applicable securities laws. If we do update one or more forward-looking statements, no inference should be drawn that we will make additional updates with respect to those or other forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning these and other risks and uncertainties is contained in our other periodic filings with the SEC.

Investors and others should note that we routinely announce financial and other material information using our Investor Relations website (https://ir.cbre.com), SEC filings, press releases, public conference calls and webcasts. We use these channels of distribution to communicate with our investors and members of the public about our company, our services and other items of interest. Information contained on our website is not part of this Annual Report or our other filings with the SEC.