Tony Long, former executive managing director of Texas, is replacing Jana Turner, who has led the team from CBRE's Newport Beach, CA office. Long will stay in Dallas to head up CBRE's 3,000 employees in property and project management and agency leasing. A new Texas leader will be named shortly.

Long's promotion is a high-profile benchmark for the two companies' integration. "It's the most significant change from the public's perspective from the merger," the 22-year veteran tells GlobeSt.com. He also gets a seat on the Americas Operating Management Board.

But as Long explains, there won't be any grandiose change with the guard change. "It's going to be a lot of business as usual. It's a world-class organization," he stresses. "The changes are going to be very minute." The mantra will be to stay focused on customers, training and retention and growing business. The first priority will be to "figure out geographical areas and customers where we have room to grow," he says. "Our number one priority is customer service and customer satisfaction."

Long says there certainly are markets in which CBRE can deepen its reach. "We are large. We have a lot of market share," he says. "We want to be a leader of how service is provided and not just sit back on the laurels of big market share."

Since the merger, the Los Angeles-based CBRE has moved onto the S&P 500 roster and placed 16th on BusinessWeek's 50 top companies. CBRE could possibly achieve Fortune 500 status by year's end, becoming the first in the industry to mark the milestone, according to Long. "It's unlikely that anyone will ever achieve the scale that we have," he says.

Long acknowledges the historical merger has had some fallout, but it's been less than a 2% personnel loss across the board. In other industry mergers, he says turnovers most often have a 5% to 15% attrition rate. In addition, Long says the impact has been less than 2% in lost revenue.

Long started his career as an analyst with TCC in 1985, broke in 1987 to pursue an MBA at Harvard University and rejoined in 1989 to fill an office leasing spot in Houston before he returned to Dallas. Prior to the merger, he oversaw TCC's eight-state central region's global services group, which totaled 2,400 employees.

"During his career, Tony has led every aspect of service delivery and has distinguished himself as an excellent leader of people and a strong contributor to the bottom line," Mike Lafitte, CBRE president of institutional and corporate services, says in a press release. "We are confident he will hit the ground running."

Turner will remain as a CBRE consultant through year's end. Her future calls for consulting for real estate companies, serving on corporate boards of directors and devoting time to charitable organizations for families and children's services. The CBRE parting will be "bittersweet," she says, adding she realizes she is fortunate to be able to "pursue my interests and my passions at a relatively young age."

Under Turner's watch, the asset services group bulked up its US property management portfolio more than 250%. The portfolio spans nearly 3,000 properties with more than 700 million sf, including assets of partners and affiliate companies.

"We will certainly miss Jana's creativity, energy and higher performance standards. She has been a terrific leader and business partner," Cal Frese, CBRE president of the Americas, says in the release. "We thank her for her many, many contributions to our success and wish her the best as she follows her dreams."