On March 1, a number of separate firms formed a single company, Cassidy Turley, including Colliers Turley Martin Tucker, Cassidy & Pinkard Colliers, Colliers ABR, Colliers Pinkard, BT Commercial, BRE Commercial in Southern California and BRE Commercial in Arizona. Mark Burkhart, CEO of Cassidy Turley, tells GlobeSt.com that adding this local firm was a natural fit. "Jim has been a very good friend of mine for a long time, we were founding members of Colliers 25 years ago," Burkhart says.

Barry's firm has operated out of Milwaukee for nearly 90 years, specializing in industrial, office, retail and investment brokerage. The firm has sold and leased more than one billion square feet of real estate, and has a large presence in Wisconsin. Barry said in a statement that the move was correct in such an increasingly competitive global marketplace. "We will be able to expand and broaden our service offerings to both investors and users," he said.

Burkhart says the reason for his new firm's growth is based on client demand. The company focuses on property management, corporate services and capital markets, "and there's great growth in all of those areas," he says. "For example, J.P. Morgan just assigned 3,000 properties to us, we just got the Weight Watchers account and Panattoni has assigned us 20 million square feet of management from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast."

Fortunately, he says, 2010 will be a much better year than last year for business. "We're already seeing in the capital markets where they are doing significant deals, which last year was…, well, let's just say it was rare. There's money out there, there's lenders out there, there's even equilibrium on valuations between buyers and sellers, that's good news. We're seeing some positive movement on the office side, and though it's a little slower on the industrial side, it's definitely a better year than 2009." However, he says it could take more than three years, and probably more, to get back to 2005-06 pricing.