Steve Delaney: I said, the reason I asked was your initial comments, when I saw the decline I was wondering if there’s this sort of a managed reduction in the portfolio just to – for risk management and building liquidity. But then you said, I took your comments Doug to say, pretty much going forward we should expect that repayments come in and that there are attractive opportunities to put that money back to work. So I came in thinking that maybe there’s a shrink strategy, and now I’m hearing more clearly that’s a more of a stability approach.
Doug Bouquard: No, it’s definitely more of a stability approach. I think we’re just trying to strike the right balance of one foot on gas, one foot on break in terms of originations and repayments. And look, I think that we’ve been very front footed. As I had mentioned in my remarks, I mean we’ve had the largest year-over-year reduction in terms of office exposure relative to all of our peers, so I think we’ve been really front footed, one. And then two, I think you know from a liquidity perspective, we are investing from a position of strength right now, and I think given our ample liquidity and our various sources of financing, that really does allow us to take advantage of right now which actually is a very attractive lending market.
And just even in the past, you know since the quarter began for example, we basically have about $123 million of new financings in the queue, one of which is closed, the other of which is under term sheets. So in terms of kind of like playing offense, we are definitely out there quoting and taking advantage of what we think is a pretty attractive lending market.
Steve Delaney: And very interesting to hear you comment on A-notes. I don’t recall hearing any of your peers mentioning €“ you know they are seeing your participations, and obviously it’s a product that’s been out in the market forever. But it’s interesting and I guess you know banks are certainly part of that I guess as well maybe as insurance companies. But is the current sort of the resetting of interest rate levels, is this a matter of absolute return, being so much more attractive on an A-note today than it was before the feds started tightening.
Doug Bouquard: Yeah, I mean I think as we €“ if I could kind of loosely bucket our, I’ll call it the three main sources of financing liquidity; that being A-notes, our existing secured credit facilities and then CRE CLOs generally speaking. Right now, the most attractive area for us from a borrowing perspective is likely within the A-note market. We actually formed some new relationships over the past two quarters with some banks that are again, generally speaking is where we are finding that the sort of best available rates is within that bank market. I think that’s really driven by two reasons. One is, you know the direct lending market has slowed, and then number two, banks are generally under certain amounts of capital pressure, and in these instances of an A-note financing with us, they view it as a way for them to still deploy capital at attractive terms, but not be the direct lender, but rather be a lender to a lender.
