Business Facilities - December 2008 - (Page 48)

FEATURE Occupying a New Space as needed as it moves people around. According to O’Brien, overlap in terms of people was not a major problem. Where the firms did have brokers from both sides in the same place and function, the firm sought ways to bring them together to create new opportunities. It helped that the companies had different business models, with strengths that were seen as complementary. “There really wasn’t, ‘You have five leaders in this certain business line, and so do we, it’s going to be a big overlap,’” O’Brien says. “We had some overlap, but in every case, we’d sit down, work it out. The natural places for leadership and growing and ideas like that all came out of our respective business models, which are melding pretty well together.” Krouch sees the integration as simply enhancing and improving competitive position. As a combined force, Staubach’s business is being introduced to Jones Lang LaSalle’s corporate solutions capabilities, facility management services and other business lines. And the latter firm benefits from Staubach’s broad U.S. market presence. “We have a broader platform and more tools that we can present to our clients, and do more things to service them, and the prospects as well,” Gates notes, mentioning facilities management and capital markets capabilities as examples. “So, we can do more, we can deliver more, we can provide even better service. Interestingly, on the Jones Lang side, they had some great relationships in some cases with large corporate clients where they weren’t doing much of the transaction work, and in some cases not any of it, 48 DECEMBER 2008 and that’s our fastball. So that’s a great fit there.” Companies such as Procter & Gamble, a longtime corporate solutions client of Jones Lang LaSalle’s, for example, are now in discussions to use the merged firm for brokerage transactions. Meanwhile, some of the major oil companies in Texas that did business with Staubach were meeting with the firm this summer to discuss expansion both in terms of platform and more tools that we can present to our clients, and we can do more things to service them and their prospects. We can do more, deliver more. We can provide better service. —John Gates, America’s Brokerage “ We have a broader ” geography and in service lines such as facilities management. Gates notes that the company can now offer “an integrated technology solution that really brings a holistic view of [a client’s] entire real estate portfolio to the desktop.” Among the stated goals of Jones Lang LaSalle in this merger are securing a leadership position in public sector services, and strengthening its industrial brokerage, which Gates notes has become a global business more rapidly than the office and retail sectors. The firm also has expanded resources for practice groups within the brokerage business, such as law firms, healthcare, banking, and data and call centers. The merged company is a product of a real estate industry that is consolidating and changing according to the needs of clients, who are demanding more services and delivery across a greater geography. “There are a lot more responsibilities on corporations these days,” O’Brien says, “and they need go-to people who can handle their needs. Not just corporations, it’s all the larger entities and even the smaller and mid-size entities. They not only need your help in New York or in Washington or in L.A., they need your global help and they need help in other service lines.” According to Gates, the firm is already delivering. Noting the “tremendous feedback” that is coming from clients and from within the organization, he says the firm is more than raring to go. O’Brien says he gets e-mails “almost every hour” informing him of how employees from the two camps are teaming up across business lines for a client. “People have just been very responsive and very open to hearing other ideas, and we’re already reshaping some ideas as to how we’ll provide services and do things, from things we’re hearing from clients and also from how our different leaders are interacting,” O’Brien says. “I think both our firms have taken a big leap in this commitment and this merger together, and I think over the coming weeks and months and years you’ll see great things out of Jones Lang LaSalle, not just our brokerage business, but our whole business.”

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Business Facilities - December 2008

Business Facilities - December 2008 Contents First Word Snapshots Corporate Moves: North Carolina Gold Award: New Engine for Growth in Virginia Silver Award: Tennessee Gets the Big Prize Bronze Award: Enrichment in Idaho Falls Honorable Mentions International Reach From America's Heartland Supply Chain Priorities Metro Spotlight: Greenville/ Spartanburg, SC The Magnolia State Has It All A Real Estate Mega-Merger State of the Year Ask the Expert Advertiser Index

Business Facilities - December 2008

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