We see continued strength in capital flows to private equity firms from institutional investors seeking above-average returns, and increased interest from foreign investors in U.S.-based private equity firms.

Private equity firms are flush with capital. They've been raising record amounts of capital to invest in businesses, and the pace of their fund-raising activity has exceeded the pace of their investment activity. This has been compounding over the past four to five years. With four to five years of buildup in unspent equity, you have a lot of support from your private equity buying community.

The key with Merrill is they're not as dependent on some of the venture capital private equity gains some of these companies earned earlier in the year, but have now lost.

Japanese institutional investors seem to have sought returns by selling dollar-denominated assets. That kind of repatriation is generally yen positive.

We see the pace of initial public offerings in 2006 remaining unchanged from 2005 with a continuing emphasis on companies with proven business models, top-line and bottom-line growth and scale.

There have been a number of firms in the 50,000- to 100,000-square-foot range that are seeking office space in the Loop 360 corridor, and the largest block of (existing) space in Southwest Austin is 40,000 square feet.