"Buying assets is 75 percent determined by your cost of capital and the flexibility of that capital," said one capital markets executive who's transacted with Bank OZK as a mezzanine lender and a borrower for more than a decade. "The lender is the most important cog in the wheel. Once we hit 2008 and 2009 we were in a liquidity crisis that then created a recession in 2010 and 2011. They were doing the most riskless deals and they were getting paid very well to do them, because very few people were willing to stand up and write construction loans at that time; their mere presence allowed them to book extraordinarily safe tickets with the very best borrowers on the planet, at premiums."