Rich Repetto: Okay. So I’m still expecting a 2Q soft launch no matter what your legal counsel probably wants you to tell you, to say how. Anyway, last question is around the corporate conversion. I’ve gotten a couple of questions. So could you just review, Howard, what are the reasons for doing the benefits to you? And then the issue of the tax rate versus the savings? And when will we expect to see sort of the quantification of that?
Howard Lutnick: Okay. So as Jason mentioned, we expected — why don’t you repeat what you said before, Jason?
Jason Hauf: We expect to provide additional information with respect to our expected tax rates going forward as soon as practical.
Howard Lutnick: No, no. But what’s the date we’re doing it. You said, we’ll do
Jason Hauf: We expect to file form S-4 registration statement in the second quarter of 2023.
Howard Lutnick: Right. That’s all I want. So in the second quarter, we’ll file our S-4. That then put the legal documents to the SEC. When they approve it, then we close. So that’s pretty much how it works. There’s nothing much in between. You just close as soon as practical thereafter. And so, that’s where we are. We’ll file it in the second quarter. Then we will come out and we’ll have a good understanding of tax rates, and we’ll try to talk to everybody and go through the details. Simplicity, right? We have met with many shareholders over time who found the structure, the up C structure complex and they would prefer to have a simple C-corp structure in order to buy our stock. So we will put that in place. It will be a simple C-corp structure.
We’ll put that in place. Timing couldn’t be better. We have the growth rate of the company coming hard and you’ve got a simpler structure. I think that will be helpful. There will be some tax leakage. We know our rate will be higher, but we will have a much simpler structure. We should be able to save money and save expense. We should be able to — as an example, we bought GFI. It had corporate broker dealers. We had BGC. We’d add partnership broker dealers. So we’re doing all of this work that can now be simplified, they can all be merged together. It could be just simpler, more capital efficient, less work to do. And so, we think that will mitigate some of the tax cost, won’t be perfect. So our tax rate will be higher, and we’ve said that all along.
However, we should be able to mitigate it to a reasonable degree. And I think simplicity will just make the company better. It will be more transparent. It will be easier to understand. We’ll get more shareholders to be able to buy the company. And I think it’ll work. So second quarter, we file. Should be able to close in the third.
Rich Repetto: Yeah. Thanks for the review, Howard. That’s helpful. Thank you.
Operator: We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Lutnick for closing comments.
Howard Lutnick: Well, thank you all. Our future is clearly bright. We feel that the volume — trading volumes are going to be excellent for the industry. Banks will do very, very well. Trading firms will do well. We feel that our technology, our global scale and the incredibly attractive position that we’re in from a comparative valuation perspective makes BGC a very, very, very attractive alternative in a marketplace where lots of people are going to win, but we feel BGC is just best positioned to have an extraordinary return for our investors. We look forward to talking to you again. We are delighted to call ourselves, again, a growth company and we look forward to reporting going forward, with higher volumes and interest rates. So stick with us for the long future. Thank you, all. I look forward to speaking to you again next quarter.
Operator: Thank you. This does conclude today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.
