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Focus Is on Expenses, Occupancy as Economy Slows Down

INDIANAPOLIS-Duke-Weeks Realty Corp. Chairman and CEO Thomas L. Hefner is chairing his REIT's overhead reduction committee "where nothing is left on the Duke-Weeks machinery except muscle and bone.

By Jim McCartney | Updated on February 09, 2001

INDIANAPOLIS-Duke-Weeks Realty Corp. Chairman and CEO Thomas L. Hefner is chairing his REIT’s overhead reduction committee “where nothing is left on the Duke-Weeks machinery except muscle and bone.” Cutting overhead is one way the industrial, office and retail REIT is responding to the economic slowdown.

“You cut your overhead, you go out and get business that other companies would like to have, and you keep checking your pulse of your customers,” Hefner says. “We’ve simply got to cut out what we don’t need. It’s not unrealistic to think we can get 10% to 15% efficiencies here.”

Hefner is quick to add the knife can cut too deep. “What we won’t do is what some in corporate America did–cut overhead while taking our eye off the top line,” he says, adding that corporations realized they had cut too much when revenues began falling off.

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