The Texas Connection's keynote speaker was Susan M. Byrne, a capital markets expert who founded Westwood Holdings Group Inc. and is its chairman and CEO as well as being a regular co-host of CNBC's Squawk Box and frequent guest on Moneyline, Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street and CNBC's Business Center. With the national job news buoying Friday's business talk, Byrne told the 200 luncheon attendees at the Hotel Crescent in Uptown that "up until this morning, the stock market thought they'd never be any job growth again the fed would never raise the interest rate again." Byrne's focus was the public market's view of real estate with an inside look at REITs, their popularity and their future.
CREW's two-day Texas Connection attracted 110 members from Texas and New Orleans to kick off the re-engineering of a regional conference initiative by the national board, which has allowed local chapters to come up with the platform. "Two and a half years ago, we felt it was important to improve the business connection in our region," Marilyn Acheson, president of the 285-member CREW Dallas, told GlobeSt.com. In 2005, the rotating conference heads to Houston.
CREW Indianapolis is readying for its launch of the concept, picking May 7 as the airing date. Meanwhile, Florida CREW chapters are ramping for a 2005 debut of its re-crafted regional meetings' format. CREW chapters in the Mid-Atlantic region and California also are expected to roll out the networking and educational sessions, said Deborah Quok, the national network's vice president from San Francisco.
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