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Tom Cousins: Forget the quarterly horse race and take care of your shareholders
Veteran developer Tom Cousins, 75, retired as chairman of Cousins Properties Inc. in November, becoming chairman emeritus of the company he founded in 1958 with $2,500. The Atlanta native earned his start-up capital by selling manufactured homes, where he also learned the single-family home building business. Four short years later, Cousins Properties (NYSE: CUZ) went public and became Georgia's largest homebuilder.
Today, Cousins is a diversified real estate investment trust (REIT) with a total market capitalization of $2 billion. The Cousins portfolio includes interests in more than 14 million sq. ft. of office, retail and industrial space, as well as 9,200 acres of land for future development. Additionally, the company owns 23 single-family neighborhood developments. And while Cousins' holdings are heavily concentrated in the Sunbelt, they also reach as far as the...