Arthur Andersen Real Estate & Hospitality ServicesGroup Names Carl Berquist as Worldwide...

Business Editors/Real Estate Writers

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WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 11, 2000

The Arthur Andersen Real Estate

According to Joe Reichner, U.S. Industry Managing Partner, "Our firm's Real Estate and Hospitality Services Group has been enormously successful during the past four years. The industry leadership demonstrated has been a direct result of the vision and guidance of Gary Lenz and his advisory partner council members, led by Carl Berquist and Edward Constantino. We are confident that Carl will continue that same record of leadership in guiding the REHSG to deliver strategic, integrated solutions to our clients."

Berquist, a partner in the Washington, D.C. practice, has more than 26 years of experience in serving public and privately held multi-location real estate and hospitality clients. He has served as the head of Arthur Andersen's Southeast U.S. region real estate practice, which includes 200 professionals in 15 offices. He has had significant experience in the areas of both public and private offerings, financial forecasts, industry accounting problems and joint venture formations.

"Our vision is to continue to expand on the strategic support we deliver to our clients in order to help them compete against the uncertainties in the new economy," said Berquist. "One way we will execute this vision is to aggressively pursue opportunities to help companies who are looking for ways to better integrate technology and eBusiness platforms with their traditional business models. We believe our approach will support the abilities of these companies to focus on their core businesses while capturing new opportunities in the new economy."

"To accomplish this, we will continue to hire the best and the brightest professionals both in our traditional service lines as well as in new areas that support our clients' strategic business plans for the 21st century," he added.

Arthur Andersen was ranked as the Overall Client Satisfaction leader for the third year in a row in the 2000-2001 Emerson Client Satisfaction Study for the Real Estate/Construction/Hospitality Industry. The client satisfaction study was conducted by Emerson Research Company, Ltd., which has provided independent market research and information services focused on the Big Five accounting and business consulting firms since 1983.