Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from Sanjay Sakhrani of KBW.
Sanjay Sakhrani - KBW
Could you talk about that pipeline of investment opportunities. Are you guys closer to any deals versus others, just trying to think about portfolio growth from here on to the end term, thanks.
Patrick Dalton
Certainly every day with the moves, we do get closer to new investment opportunities. When we raised our capital, it was mid to late August. When the markets come back in September, we have been having a lot of dialogue. It's not our practice to commit capital before we have sufficient capital and we are comfortable to investing, so we've been very actively speaking with sponsors.
There are a number of opportunities that we find interesting and each week they're developing more and more. The timing of the closing of those transactions depends upon a lot of features.
Number one; do we actually get there day-to-day on our due diligence and structuring and when does the company actually find itself for sale, if it’s a NBL process and the closing of that sale is not dictated by us, but rather by the sponsors who are buying those companies. We may commit our capital or be prepared to allocate committed capital in advance of an opportunity that will not show up into our financials until it actually closes.
So, it does take some time and we go back to the last cycles, there's definitely a period of rebound followed by new M&A opportunities that hit the pipeline which take three to six months to actually go through the process. Our very diligent process of understanding and identifying which companies are most appropriate to invest in and what level and what structure, they just take time.
We're very confident and happy that we have the capital. We're confident those opportunities will continue to emerge, but when they close, we really can’t dictate and that’s why you’ve seen historically, a very variable investment pace quarter-to-quarter. We are encouraged by what we are seeing develop, not only of the number, but the quality especially if we start to see the beginnings of an economic recovery, more companies will be willing to sell themselves and more buyers certainly will want to put capital forth to buy companies.
Jim Zelter
As we’ve talked about, one of the challenges that we saw three to nine months ago was going on in the loan market. As the loan market has certainly traded up and secondary prices have moved up, banks are much more willing to engage in lending on the senior part of the capital structure.
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