The team led by Raus, who is a principal at Staubach, will focuson suburban accounts, particularly the O'Hare and Northwestsubmarkets which they have experience in, says Robert Hepding,chief operating officer for Staubach. The team led by Leiding andKotrogiannis, both senior vice presidents with Staubach, will focuson national accounts. "In the end of 2006, we went through adetailed needs analysis in our annual strategic planning process,"Hepding says. "We identified areas of key focus for us for 2007 andboth of those groups fit an identified need for us, and they arealso great culture fits for our organization." Future plans for thecompany are to focus on industrial and logistics, he says.

Although Staubach has hired eight former Equis employees withina month time span, it is not a reflection on Equis or Staubach, thecompanies say. "In our industry, it is overall in a state of fluxbased on some recent acquisitions. I do not think it is somethingthat is specific to one firm or another," says Hepding, who joinedStaubach last year from CB Richard Ellis.

Chris Wood, senior vice president and managing director ofChicago operations for Equis, says there are "ebbs and flows" withthe human resources at Equis just like other businesses. "There isa tremendous amount of competition in place right now for brokerteams," Wood says. "The timing of these two different teams goingto Staubach is coincidental but we wish them the best. [They are]great guys. We wish they had decided to stay at Equis but certainlyI understand that they want to do something different."