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Do you have any idea of what the total amount of money available in the portfolio of AEA is? Did I see a figure like three billion, five hundred million?

Could be. I'm not up on that number and I don't want to be. I don't want to give you that.

Excuse my financial ignorance. I just want to ask you a couple of basic questions, if that's all right. What is the difference between the active amount of money in the commitment fund, say, and the total portfolio. Because there seems to be--when you enter AEA, the individual makes a certain of commitment to AEA. Correct?

Yes.

And the commitment fund is the sum total of the committed monies.

Well, what happens is, generally, the AEA Investor is only part of the up-front money. The rest of it is borrowed. So that you have to have a good track record--AEA has to have a good track record to go to the insurance companies or the banks and get--the major part of the financing comes from the outside. They get their money back, plus the interest on the basis of when we make our sale.

There's no magic to it. It's just that the group has a lot of expertise, and just as Ralph Lazarus could hold our hand on the Loehmann acquisition, others have done the same thing-- whether it's steel or oil or other opportunities. And on occasion the member of AEA who has an interest in that particular area of business will step out of the AEA commitment, simply