BISNOW: TPG started off its foray into the real estate services world with a distressed deal. It paid Australian conglomerate UGL around $1.1B for DTZ, the European and Asian property services firm, in June 2014.

UGL had itself picked up DTZ in a distressed deal, when in 2011 the U.K.-listed firm hit a cash crisis and needed to find an emergency buyer. It was eventually sold through an insolvency process. But UGL could not integrate DTZ into its wider business and saw its share price drop after shareholders questioned its strategy, leading to a sale of DTZ.

TPG immediately began the process of bulking up DTZ, and agreed to pay $360M for Cassidy Turley in September 2014. Then in September 2015 it made its biggest bet yet, paying $1.9B for Cushman & Wakefield.

So TPG paid nearly $3.4B for the businesses that make up Cushman today. It then took out a huge slug of its money by loading debt onto the business, around $2.8B, according to the IPO prospectus.

That puts the size of its equity investment at about $600M, for a business where the equity is valued at $3.1B, or a $2.5B paper profit. TPG and its partners only sold 34% of Cushman, retaining a 66% stake.

As the price of the shares rises or falls and TPG sells more of its shares in Cushman, that profit figure will change. But it is safe to say that TPG has done pretty well out of its foray into real estate services.