The company closed on a total of $939 million transactions; 32financing and net lease arrangements and 51 real estate securitiesinvestments.

"Our fourth quarter 2006 financing volume represented anotherrecord for the company. Direct originations again represented amajority of our lending volume, with 73% of our fourth quartercommitments structured directly with customers, and 48% completedwith repeat borrowers," says David Hamamoto, president and CEO in astatement. "Our larger balance sheet and increased flexibility inmatch funding attractive investments resulting from closing CDOVIII have enabled us to make larger capital commitments to highquality owners. Our average loan commitment was $21.0 million forthe fourth quarter, compared to $17.4 million in our entire loanportfolio."

For 2006, AFFO was $62.6 million, a total that more than doubled2005's AFFO of $21.5 million, per share that factors out to $1.32.Hamamoto says, "2006 was a break-out year for NorthStar RealtyFinance by every metric. We made approximately $2.8 billion offinancing commitments across our business, maintained a solidcredit track record and grew our equity market capitalization from$367 million to $1.1 billion. Since going public in 2004, we havedelivered over 30% annualized total returns to shareholders. During2006, we also planted the seeds for an exciting future for thecompany." At the start of 2007, NorthStar has management of $4.9billion worth of assets.