Jay Horgen: Yes. Thanks, Patrick. Thanks for your question. So maybe, Tom and I will each take a shot at this. I’ll let Tom — you go first, and then I’ll follow up.
Tom Wojcik: So I guess, first, Patrick, just to frame it from an AMG perspective, at a corporate level, we didn’t have any exposure to any of the banks in question. And our Affiliates didn’t really have any corporate exposure. We had a couple of Affiliates who owned a couple of the stocks, but none in a material or outsized way. So as a first order impact, we really didn’t see much in terms of some of the volatility around the banking issues in the quarter. In terms of what the new investment opportunity looks like or sort of changes in dialogue, maybe Jay will touch more specifically on how it’s impacting prospecting or conversations. But I’ll say one thing is, it’s another sort of leg to a multi-leg stool of what’s just been happening over the course of the past several years in terms of volatility in markets and in terms of the way that independent partner-owned firms are viewing the overall landscape and really thinking about how do they build their business from here.
As each sort of new event occurs in the market kind of creating uncertainty, creating volatility, you see a lot of businesses really thinking more and more about the value of an institutional quality strategic partner to try and help them navigate volatility, to try and help them prosecute these big opportunities out in front of them. So from a macro level perspective, I think it’s just another addition to the list of things that people are thinking about, how do I make my business better and can AMG really help? And then maybe Jay can talk a little bit specifically about any impact in terms of prospecting.
Jay Horgen: Yes. Well, I’m going to end with prospecting, but I’ll maybe take it at the most fundamental level. Obviously, at the individual security level with banks, there’s an opportunity for fundamental differentiated active managers to make discerning choices, which really then brings me to a broader point, which is at the market level, the impact of markets. We have seen alpha in liquid alts strategies, and we’ve seen differentiated returns in our active equity strategy. So I think this is an environment — this is symptomatic of an environment where you’re seeing alpha. And that’s really good for independent partner-owned firms because they have a strategic advantage relative to consolidated employee-based organizations, in my opinion.
So then I would say, maybe taking it at a structural perspective, nonbank asset management has been a decade-long trend. And I think what’s happening in banks today might accelerate even those — that nonbank asset management functions. We’ve seen it in a range of areas, most notably, and the one that people talk about today are — is the direct lending area. So — but there are many other areas that nonbank kind of asset management has filled the spot of where banks used to, either on the asset side or even on the consulting side really helped, I guess, call it, Main Street America. And so we’re seeing that trend in new to business starts, new capital formed within the asset management industry, and we’re focused on these long-term secular trends.
That’s kind of one of the reasons why I get to the last point, which is new investments. It’s clearly benefited from disruption in markets because, generally speaking, it means that people are leaving — it’s not necessarily banks divesting. It’s just people — high-quality people leaving the banks and starting asset management or joining independent firms. So it’s really a human capital point that I’m making here, which is we do think that independent partner-owned firms are the best place to find human capital. It’s where alpha is created in our minds. And therefore, we are excited about AMG’s opportunity to participate. And as I said in my prepared remarks, we are uniquely advantaged because you can invest in AMG, and that’s investing in a diversified array of independent high-quality alpha-oriented organizations.
