Canada’s Altus Group has terminated its proposed US$225-million acquisition of Houston-based Situs Group’s commercial real estate valuation business.

Altus said in a news release Friday that the transaction was unlikely to receive regulatory approval in a timely manner, despite the Canadian firm’s “extensive engagement” with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the past six months. As a result of the scrapped acquisition, Toronto-headquartered Altus will pay a US$3-million termination fee to Situs.

“We are disappointed that we cannot move forward with a deal we believe would benefit all stakeholders and contribute towards our efforts to bring greater consistency and transparency of valuations across the CRE industry,” said Altus CEO Jim Hannon.

“This opportunity would have led to improved compliance reporting of valuations and provided our clients and their investors with deeper insights on the performance of their CRE assets. Moving forward, Altus Group is strongly positioned to execute on our organic strategy to deliver best-in-class valuation intelligence to our clients.”

The Situs valuation service offers independent valuation management solutions to some of the largest commercial real estate institutional investors in the U.S., including pension funds, insurance companies, investment managers, banks, and other CRE asset owners and investors.

Altus is a leading commercial real estate asset and fund intelligence firm that serves a global client base.

Initially, Altus expected the deal to close in the first half of 2024. It would have added 350 employees to the Altus talent base of approximately 3,000.