Operator
Our next question will come from John Moran of Macquarie
John Moran, Macquarie
Hi guys, how is it going? Can you hear me? I just wanted to kind of touch real quickly, I mean a lot of the growth in the fourth quarter and for the year really came out of that essential business lines versus traditional C&I or Commercial Real Estate. And I know that there has been better — just flat out better risk adjusted opportunities there and a little bit less competition. I wonder if you could give up quick update on where those yields might be today versus the traditional business and how you kind of see that playing out over, over ’15?
Robert Sarver, Chairman and CEO, Western Alliance Bancorporation
Well yes, the non-profit area and the municipal area got really strong growth for us. And actually the growth has started to pick up in deposits too. We opened up in that book of business we opened up about 10 new deposit relationships in the quarter over $10 million. And so we carved a pretty nice niche there in our markets. It is a good market for us because we really do not need to compete against the money setter banks, because the rest of the banks are not really in the business. And so we are able to get some pretty good returns. I do not know, Dale do you have the exact numbers. I mean on, on the real high quality stuff, we are averaging spreads of about 320 over life-term LIBOR swap rates. So they are pretty good spreads.
You know what happens with some of this specialty areas, you carve a niche and your niche is that you have people with expertise that really know the business. So, we have that in medical, we have it in legal, we have it in like, we have done a fair amount of kind of high tier franchise restaurant financing. But then you follow the market and you see where it goes, and as an example, we got into the restaurant business five years ago and we are making loans in the sixes because all the finance companies had vanished. And so we picked up some pretty good market share. Now the finance companies are back, with terms that are probably not real smart and so we are not doing much of that anymore. And so we got about 15 of these different niches and for us it is, hit in the gas and the brakes at the right time in each of them. But, it is the best way for us to grow our business because we really add value to the customer. If you just limit it to traditional C&I loan and Real Estate Investor Owner-Occupied loan, those clients while we are good at it, they have a lot of options. When we get into some of these areas that require someone to really understand the business. There is a lot less options, and less options means better credit structure and better risked-adjusted pricing.
John Moran, Macquarie
Sure yes, that’s helpful, helpful detail and I appreciate that. I got two, two kind of finance key questions for Dale, too? One is, just with the partial retirement of the SBLF and then I think there is still a chunk of the higher cost debt come in due at the end of the year. Any thoughts on replacement capital that might be needed at the, at the end of ’15? I mean obviously it will going to come at a much lower rate than what is hanging around out there today given the ratings. And then just on tax rate, which run a little bit higher in the quarter and looking for what might be a good rate to use going forward there?
