Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions).
Your first question comes from the line of John Pancari with JP Morgan.
Joseph M. Grant
Hi, John. Good evening.
John Pancari
Jody, can you just comment a little bit on the competition in your market coming from the larger players. Again, you do compete against the larger money center names there in Texas. Obviously, these larger banks tend to in terms credit downturn and pull back notably across their markets regardless of where it is and since Texas is holding up still a little better are you seeing some of these larger players pull back and that could be an opportunity to pick up share?
Joseph M. Grant
Well, what we would love to is see those bigger banks have those knee jerks reactions that emanate from New York and other places and filter down to our markets. As you know, John, the biggest banks, they continue to be upscale in their targeting of commercial clients, targeted mostly on the Fortune 1000, 2000 and also at the bottom end of the market, the branch activity continues to be pretty frenetic down here although there are some signs that is has slowed somewhat recently. We also have a lot of new charters that have been filed and new banks that have been opened during year which we have a hard time understanding but all of that having been said, the competition is keen, the banks that are in our space are doing pretty well for the most part. (Inaudible) & Frost had a pretty good report. Bank of Texas which surreptitiously operates under that name is (inaudible) really the bank local holder but nonetheless they are good competition. We are in the market place being prudently aggressive and I think there is a chance to increase market share and the stronger banks that are well capitalized as we are and that have funding sources and excess capacity on their balance sheets which we have based upon warehouse of funds that we have at the holding company plus a major facility that we have available to us gives us dry powder. So, we think we are well positioned for growth as the opportunity occurs and we do think the opportunity will occur sooner here than it will in the rest of the country.
John Pancari
George or Peter, George in particular. I would like to add some granularity to that, but that’s kind of a 35,000 (inaudible) bright idea.
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