JLL is a commercial real estate and investment management firm headquartered in Chicago, with project and development management, capital markets, leasing and research practices operating in more than 80 countries. Its construction-adjacent work runs from owner’s representation on fit-out and development programs to the market intelligence that developers and contractors price against. JLL’s North America Data Center Report for midyear 2026, released in August, put first-half absorption at a record 25 gigawatts with vacancy holding at 1 percent and 66 gigawatts under construction, 95 percent of it already pre-committed. The firm is also handling leasing on the $200 million redevelopment of 460 Park Avenue in Manhattan.
1783 is the founding date JLL puts on its own corporate record. The firm began as Jones Lang Wooten and took its present form in 1999 through a merger with LaSalle Partners International. The registered name is Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. Global headquarters sit in the Aon Center at 200 East Randolph Drive in downtown Chicago; the principal office of incorporation is registered at 7 St. Paul Street in Baltimore.
Scale shapes how the firm operates. JLL reports more than 310 corporate offices across over 80 countries, upward of 113,000 employees, and clients in more than 130 countries. It states that it manages over 30,000 design, construction, expansion, refurbishment and upgrade projects each year. That volume, rather than brokerage alone, is what puts the company in a construction directory.
The construction work runs through Project Management. JLL divides it three ways. Design gives a client a single point of contact responsible for programming, design concepts, workplace and space planning, and fit-out. Project management covers delivery across design and construction, supported by project workflow software. Development services advises on master planning, project feasibility and costing for ground-up construction, build-to-suit and complex redevelopment. A separate cost management practice handles budget control and real-time reporting.
Around those sit the wider service lines: Real Estate Management Services for facilities, projects and portfolios; Leasing Advisory; Capital Markets; Software and Technology Solutions; and Investment Management. JLL also runs Falcon, a proprietary AI platform for commercial real estate that its professionals use for analysis, and JLL Spark, a venture arm with $425 million placed into proptech startups and further capital into climate startups.
On governance, JLL has appeared on Ethisphere’s World’s Most Ethical Companies list every year since 2008 and holds Ethisphere’s Compliance Leader Verification, which assesses ethics programs, corporate culture, risk assessment and training standards. Fortune has named it to the World’s Most Admired Companies list for ten consecutive years. It ranked 175th on the 2026 Fortune 500 on annual revenue of $26.1 billion, up from 188th the prior year.
Christian Ulbrich has been chief executive since October 2016 and joined the board in May 2016. Siddharth Mehta became a director in 2019 and chairman of the board in June 2020. KPMG audits the financial statements.
