Now before taking your questions, I would like to briefly comment on how we are thinking of our performance targets. As you know, our performance targets are heavily return on equity driven. And our threshold of good performance has been an 11% return on common equity and a 14% return on tangible common equity. As we enter the early portion of 2015, we do believe that a thin yield interest rate scenario is upon us. While the interest rate environment is volatile and the duration of this environment is hard to predict amid concerns regarding global economic growth and heightened geopolitical risks, I do want to address how we are thinking performance in this environment. The 11% return on equity target remains our standard of good performance with respect to executive compensation and other goal setting kinds of activities. However, we believe the thin rate environment makes a 10% return on equity more realistic in the near term. We remain committed to strong returns and we will work very hard in pursuit of our targets as the year unfolds. That concludes our comments on fourth quarter and full year 2014 earnings. With that, we would like to open the calls and take your questions.
Question and Answer Session
Operator
Yes, thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. And the first question comes from Casey Haire with Jefferies.
Casey Haire, Jefferies
Good morning guys. Let me start off with the — I mean the outlook Dave, obviously excess liquidity kind of hold you back a little bit this quarter, could you quantify that drag and then also just give us — sounds like we could get a reset here on the first quarter — your best guess as to where we might reset in the first quarter?
Dave Kaye, Chief Financial Officer
Yes, I think the excess liquidity was about half of the drop sequentially and then the other piece was just lower interest recapture, really almost zero interest recapture for the quarter. Some quarters we have had more than others but this was definitely the lowest there. And sorry your second part was — I think the excess liquidity will probably go away in this first quarter. We tend to see some lower deposit balances as clients makes some tax payments later in the first quarter. So the average balances tend to run seasonally a little bit lower. That would eat up some of the liquidity. But there is still little pressure on the loan yields.
Casey Haire, Jefferies
Understood. And then Banyan seems like it got up to a little bit to a slow start. Just curious, my presumption is you guys expect the EBITDA improvement from here. Should we see that more on the revenue side or expense side?
Dave Kaye, Chief Financial Officer
Well I think we are looking forward on both realistically the expenses savings that we been targeting. You know we will probably you will see that more materialize in the back half of the year as they work through the integration and the cost saving efforts there.
Casey Haire, Jefferies
Okay. And just last one for me Clay, you mentioned just strategically speaking that obviously the interest rate environment is challenging. I know you guys are going to be working through the Banyan integration but could you just give us some thoughts on your appetite to perhaps follow up this Banyan deal with another one this year? Another wealth manager? What is the appetite in 2015?
