Phil Ainlay*

Phil Ainlay is a Vice President Office Leasing. His experience with CBRE covers the full spectrum of tenant advocacy and strategic occupancy planning, including developing, in concert with his major clients, workplace strategies to ensure that his clients maximize their real estate facilities.

Phil has developed considerable expertise in the insurance and financial services sector, healthcare sector and government sector. He has represented the provincial government in negotiations for major lease transactions in Toronto and he has represented a major hospital client in Toronto for several significant lease transactions.

Phil has 35 years direct experience in the real estate industry, including 17 years in brokerage, 2 years as an independent real estate consultant, and 16 years in progressively more responsible roles at a major Canadian financial institution where he led a team of 12 real estate professionals in optimizing a 300 branch network in Ontario. Phil’s team was responsible for identifying new branch sites, and relocation sites to ensure market competitiveness. He was also responsible for preparing business cases for alterations to the branch network (i.e. for new branches/relocation opportunities/branch closure candidates), demographic studies, handling all lease renewals for the network, and executing property dispositions.

Phil also brings to his current CBRE role, and to his clients, a broad based business background. He was a District Manager for a major financial institution for 7 years, where he was responsible for the development and execution of financial and business plans for a group of 15 branches (with 325 staff) in Midtown Toronto. He led the key focus areas of sales management, business development, human resources, risk management, marketing and audit functions.

During the past 5 years (2015-2019), Phil has handled on behalf of his tenant clients, transactions in excess of 1.5 million sq. ft. of office space.