Final week, sitting along with his laptop computer at San Diego Worldwide Airport, Scott Panzer fired off an electronic mail that ended up grabbing headlines and costing him his publish at a significant world actual property agency. Understanding Panzer, actual property insiders say, he’d in all probability do it over again.
Final week, sitting along with his laptop computer at San Diego Worldwide Airport, Scott Panzer fired off an electronic mail that ended up grabbing headlines and costing him his publish at a significant world actual property agency. Understanding Panzer, actual property insiders say, he’s in all probability do it over again.
Panzer’s reply was provocative for certain — and for good purpose, he maintains. Peter Riguardi, the chairman and president of JLL’s New York regional workplace, despatched a memo urging staffers to “give (Mamdani) an opportunity to guide.” This was regardless of Mamdani’s skinny resume, his pledges to vastly increase the welfare state, his radical views on policing and his refusal to denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada”.
Panzer responded by evaluating the sentiment to acquiescence that led to the rise of Adolf Hitler. Reached over the weekend, Panzer offered a written assertion to The Submit explaining what prompted his missive. He additionally didn’t apologize for his actions, which proceed to roil the town’s business actual property sector.
“As an trade we want to have the ability to have open, significant conversations on the intense challenges the brand new mayor’s management presents. My views are shared by thousands and thousands of people that don’t converse up for worry of retribution,” Panzer solely informed the Submit. “The true property trade can sick afford inexperienced administration by a novice politician with radical concepts.”
JLL reps didn’t return repeated requests for remark.
Panzer, 67, might have been JLL’s greatest rainmaker, with accounts together with the premier workplace tower at 9 W. 57th St. in Midtown Manhattan. Regardless of his status as a voluble presence on the agency, he has been identified for his generosity mentoring youthful brokers. “He’s such an incredible man,” a protege working at a rival agency informed The Submit. “He’s very profitable however in contrast to most individuals on this crappy trade, he’s a good man. And he isn’t very PC about talking his thoughts.”
It additionally must be famous, in line with sources, that Panzer and Riguardi have clashed up to now, primarily over administration points contained in the agency. JLL, like many main brokerage companies right here, additionally has important enterprise dealings with Metropolis Corridor. That stated, when Panzer noticed Riguardi’s Mamdani memo, his first response was shock. “Why is he getting concerned on this?” he requested, in line with an individual with direct information of his considering.
Panzer’s subsequent fateful impulse was to begin a “dialog” about how his agency and enterprise typically ought to take care of the firebrand Mamdani, whose personal provocations have included threats to arrest Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu if he visited Gotham over his navy response to Hamas terrorists after the Oct. 7 bloodbath.
This, insiders notice, is even supposing Panzer isn’t significantly spiritual. He has informed folks he was raised half Jewish and half Christian. However he is also a pupil of historical past and politics – significantly when it’d influence his shoppers’ properties.
“Is it simply me, or does this sound eerily just like what a lot of Germany and Europe stated about you understand who again in 1938?” he wrote. “Everyone knows how that labored out for them — and for the world.”
He added “Simply when it appeared that shifting from [former Mayor Bill] de Blasio to [Mayor Eric} Adams couldn’t be much worse, New Yorkers have once again dipped their toes into the boiling cauldron of socialist reform.”
In a final, cage-rattling bomb, Panzer noted a trip he took to Istanbul several years back. “I didn’t mind hearing the adhan (a Muslim prayer) five times a day for the few days I was there – I would not want that to be a 365 day event. But alas, this too is just around the corner for NYC.”
A few hours after Panzer hit “send,” he was in the air flying back to New York when he got a message from JLL’s HR and management that they needed to talk immediately.
Panzer called when his flight got in around 10 p.m. “You never speak to me unless something is wrong” he told the JLL executive on the other end of the line, according to a source. The voice promptly patched in HR, which told him that his email was “not in keeping with company policy.”
JLL offered no specifics other than to say he was being ousted from the firm.
Panzer’s response, according to a source: “I’m not going to fight you,” adding that as a student of history, he just wanted to get employees thinking about what has happened in the past when people acquiesced to radicals.
Eight seconds later, after 16 years at the big commercial real estate firm, Panzer’s access to his email and other company portals was cut off, sources said.
As for his future, Panzer is still trying to decide, according to people close to him, who add he’s made enough money that he doesn’t have to work. JLL will be keeping his clients as per their brokerage agreement. Meanwhile, Panzer has received countless emails of support “from people who feel they can’t speak up,” he has told friends.
There is also talk in the New York real estate industry that some clients might boycott JLL for cutting ties with a top rainmaker – just because he spoke his mind.
