Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator instructions) Our first question is from Frank Schiraldi of Sandler O’Niell. I’m sorry if I mispronounced your name. Please go ahead.
Frank Schiraldi – Sandler O’Niell
Good morning
John Warren
Hi, Frank. How are you?
Frank Schiraldi – Sandler O’Niell
Good. How are you doing?
John Warren
Good.
Frank Schiraldi – Sandler O’Niell
Just a couple of questions.
John Warren
Sure.
Frank Schiraldi – Sandler O’Niell
I’m wondering if you can give us any specifics or further color on the commercial loan growth in the quarter as far as geography, and size, and any specifics that you can give, really.
John Warren
It’s really been New England, largely Rhode Island, with a little bit over the Massachusetts and with our branches in Connecticut, a little bit in Connecticut as well.
Frank Schiraldi – Sandler O’Niell
Okay. And I’m assuming, John, from the comments you made just a second ago, what are your thoughts on commercial loan growth next year? I mean based on the pipeline, do you expect next – for instance, 1Q ’09, do you expect sort of similar growth that we saw quarter-over-quarter here.
John Warren
I was going to reference quarter-over-quarter. I mean I think the key is and continues to be the destruction of the largest institutions in our competitive area. That’s been the source of a huge chunk of our lending, (inaudible) organic activity going on. But obviously, the economy has slowed significantly, not just in Rhode Island and New England, but through out the country. So what we really had is, and thankful for, all the major institutions are so distracted that we’ve had business coming to us. So we expect to see it continue growing. It won’t be the 29% growth we saw year-over-year. And we’ll just see how the business environment in Rhode Island and the larger customers come to us.
Frank Schiraldi – Sandler O’Neill
And then, just finally on Wolf Management business, obviously, it’s difficult to control at the market, but as far as flows, what have you seen so far? It’s still early, obviously, but so far this year?
John Warren
The customer base we have has been, I guess, positive, responsive. I think in the information we included in the press release and you probably didn’t have time – Dave put in a stack of numbers and multiple pages to say the least. We did include the new business originations for the four quarters, quarter-by-quarter last year.
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