REAL ESTATE

Another group of old Daum-Johnstown employees has missed all the excitement. They left in 1983 to start Collins Fuller Corp., a Newport Beach-based commercial broker.

That company said recently that Michael Collins has moved up to president.

He replaces his father and the firm’s founder, James E. Collins, who remains chairman and chief executive.

The two executives and in-law Richard H. Fuller now have offices in Los Angeles, Orange County and the Inland Empire 5 years after leaving Daum, an old-line broker of industrial buildings founded in 1904.

Daum was bought in 1984 by Johnstown American in Atlanta, which in turn was acquired by Southmark on one of its spending sprees.

Collins Fuller is one of about a dozen smaller brokerages in Orange County that are trying to grab business away from big guys like Coldwell Banker and Grubb & Ellis.

Just as the old Daum Corp. did, the new brokerage specializes in industrial real estate.

If you’re still following all this, it gets even more complicated.

Collins Fuller recently announced that it had hired Daum-Johnstown’s former president, Joseph J. Sojka, to run its new Gardena office.

Sojka left Daum-Johnstown last fall during the broker stampede under circumstances that the company would not comment on.