Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Andrea Jao from Lehman Brothers. Please proceed.
Andrea Jao - Lehman Brothers
Good afternoon, gentlemen.
Chris Carey
Andrea, hi nice to hear from you.
Russell Goldsmith
Hi, Andrea.
Andrea Jao - Lehman Brothers
Like wise. Quick question the efficiency ratio, which I believe is about 200 bit higher than it, was a year ago. I know you made acquisitions, but could you talk about that in variable trend you think in coming quarters, where do you want to see it normalize and how you will get there?
Russell Goldsmith
Well, let me take that one Andrea. We don’t focus as much as somewhat I think on the specific efficiency ratio particularly because we are growing our fee businesses at such a high rate and they all tend to be what the industry uses not good efficiency rate businesses, but they are away from those businesses very high. So I mean there are two fundamental reasons.
One, we have and really expanded our fee businesses and also over that whole year time period some of our deposits shifted out of the bank into our wealth management and brokerage business and those are the two overriding reasons for the lower efficient ratio. I just think overall we have been about as good as you can be in a tough environment you start to manage expenses and still investing talent, invest in offices and things like that.
So, we don’t try to forecast on the number. We continue to look for way and make the company more efficient, but at the same time we are always looking for things that we can invest in continue to grow the company.
Andrea Jao - Lehman Brothers
Fair enough. My follow-up question is on deposit you mentioned the run up in title and escrow deposits. Could you talk a bit more about what’s going on about the mix shift customer preferences and looking out into the first quarter when deposits tend to be weak, what can you tell us at this point?
Chris Carey
Well, I think we feel really good about our business area there what they done this year in the tough environment adding more clients and actually we saw some growth in it over the part of the year and then it came down a little bit this quarter somewhat predictably. I think with even a further slow down in the housing environment.
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