NEW YORK CITY—For executives at a successful firm, it would be easy to sit back and rest on their laurels. But the senior leadership at DTZ is forging a different path.
Today, we're one of the largest global providers of real estate services but I wouldn't say we play in the league we want to be in yet,” Peter Hennessy, president, New York tri-state region, tells GlobeSt.com in the wake of DTZ and Cassidy Turley's acquisition by a private equity consortium led by TPG Capital. “We have the chance to build the platform and gain stature throughout the country and world. We're looking to define ourselves as one of three global players.”
To accomplish that, he says, the firm needs to go as far as doing away with several industry conventions. “We want to be definitively different. Partly it comes down to us asking, 'How do you create an alignment between brokers and the business? Client development costs—such as travel, entertainment—create a constant push/pull between the company and the sales professional. So we want to address that challenge because it distracts from the focus of doing great work for clients.”
In addition, Hennessy notes, “There's a conflict between sales people because they compete. That's a friction point we want to get rid of. We want people to work together. In fact, we've already moved them around and it'll happen again."
“We'll move everyone around every six months to get them to collaborate and keep things nimble. An investor who buys our services may need to work with our capital markets group as well as property leasing while occupiers may buy leasing, capital markets and others so we integrate our guys.”
Hennessy also plans to grow the NY office and will do so by three different measures: acquisitions, recruitment and training existing staff for enhancement. The firm has room to grow in several areas, he says, including capital markets, leasing, property management, occupier business and more.
But the firm's presence here won't expand just for the sake of size, Hennessy notes. “The objective isn't to get big, it's to get stronger. We want to be among the top three to five firms in the city and we want the best and brightest of the industry to see what we're doing and say 'I want to be a part of that.'”
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Rayna Katz
Rayna Katz is a seasoned business journalist whose extensive experience includes coverage of the lodging sector, travel and the culinary space. She was most recently content director for a business-to-business publisher, overseeing four publications. While at Meeting News, a travel trade publication, she received a Best Reporting award for a story on meeting cancellations in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
