Joe Fenech, Hovde Group
Okay. Fair enough. And then you guys talked a little bit last quarter about a seasonal slowdown in Florida. Can you talk about what loan growth looked like specifically in Florida in the fourth quarter and looking out into this year?
John Kanas, Chairman, President and CEO
I don’t know. Tom Cornish is sitting here with me. He’s got a lot more years of experience in Florida than I do, and he’s running the whole state for us there. What would you say the answer that question?
Thomas Cornish, President of Florida for BankUnited, Inc.
Yeah, I think if you look at Florida for the fourth quarter, we had about $300 million. I think that was a pretty good number as we think about what’s happening around the state and in different markets. Different markets are growing at different rates, but when John talks about how big the market is, we have a significant market share in middle market and commercial real estate and business banking in the South Florida market. But when we looked at the Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, West coast markets, all of those markets have somewhat trailed to south Florida market in terms of Economic growth. But we’ve invested a lot and we are going to invest a lot in the teams in each of those markets this year. I think as you – as we look at Florida, the opportunity for the entire state recovering at the same pace that South Florida has recovered over the last couple of years and the investment that we are going to make in different markets and different teams, some we’ve already made and some over the course of the rest of this year, I think the overall picture in Florida is very good.
John Kanas, Chairman, President and CEO
Yeah, I’ve said this to some of you guys before. You should get down here. We talk about this a lot, but it’s really — it bears looking at it. The snapback in economic growth down here is extraordinary. You can’t get down Brickell Avenue for the construction cranes. And there is a huge difference with — look, we are not being naïve. We know that Florida has always been a boom-and-bust state and it is — there is always that issue. But the big difference between what we are seeing in Florida now and what we saw in 2003, 2004, 2005, it was ramping up toward 2008, 2009 when things blew up is — those are the days when every real estate broker in town had a deposit down on four different condo units in buildings that never got built and leverage was coming out of everybody’s ears and there was no equity in these deals. Very, very different situation down here in South Florida today. These buildings are put up mostly with equity. They’re in the hands of very solid developers. Many of them coming out of the north and northeast, and, all of the other positive factors that are driving South Florida, that is the migration of money out of Latin America still continues unabated. This is really something. If you haven’t been down here to see this, you really should invest $500 on a Southwest ticket and get down and take a look at it. But if you do, make a reservation in the restaurant two weeks ahead of time.
Joe Fenech, Hovde Group
Okay. And two more quick ones, guys. Any update on capital? Thoughts on, like, the timing and form of any potential action there, given the growth you are expecting this year?
Raj Singh, Chief Operating Officer
Like we’ve said in the past, we expect to deploy our current capital maybe towards the end of the year. Might even be first quarter of ’16 when we get back into the market to raise more capital. And when we do, since we have no other form of capital other than common, in all likeliness we will be raising other forms of capital, not common. It will be probably sub-debt or senior debt or the cheapest form of capital. It looks like towards the end of ’15, possibly even early ’16.
Leslie Lunak, Chief Financial Officer
Yeah, I would echo that.
