I don’t think anybody would have expected that acquisition a few years ago. We had grown to the point where it made sense to buy that company. We’ve had others like that. And I think you should expect to see M&A from us that will expand our capability to serve our company with really well-run companies with really good brands. And if we can’t get those kind of deals done, we’re not going to do M&A. We’re not going to force it just to build scale. We can build scale through organic growth.
Michael Griffin: Great. And then just on the capital markets outlook. Has anything changed across the different regions? Maybe are you expecting a greater pickup in APAC relative to the Americas or – any kind of color you could give on the state of performance of the different regions would be helpful.
Emma Giamartino: Yes. On the sales front, it hasn’t – I think overall, our expectations, as we said, have declined. A couple of things to note about the second half of the year. Overall, it we’re looking at a much easier compare. So the first half of 2022 has over 30% growth. The second half of 2022 was down over 30%. So we’re looking at a very different compare. The Americas is expected to decline the most as we saw in the first half of the year. EMEA to a lesser extent, and then APAC will perform the best, and we’re expecting that for the year to decline like mid-single digits.
Michael Griffin: Great. That’s it for me. Thanks.
Operator: Thank you. Our final question comes from Jade Rahmani from KBW. Please go ahead. Jade, your line is live sir.
Jade Rahmani: Thank you. M&A is always a fascinating topic yet. I know you can’t say much. Can you say whether your focus is domestic or international?
Bob Sulentic: It’s both, Jade. And I don’t say that globally. We have good opportunities both here in the U.S. and internationally, and we have some opportunities that span the two. By the way, we had several questions today about the pace of M&A. The minute you start looking at acquiring companies that operate across multiple countries. That process takes a long time. And you have to make sure that you’re confident, you can get regulatory approval across those countries that you can integrate across those countries that you can bring people along in a way that is motivating. And so I would say we have M&A opportunities that are specific to the U.S. and specific to countries outside the U.S., but importantly, we have opportunities to span countries, which is exciting.
Jade Rahmani: I wanted to also ask about AI if that’s an area you want to invest in.
Bob Sulentic: We’re looking – Emma mentioned our Chief Operating Officer, Vikram Kohli earlier. Vikram overseas or digital and technology team, which we’ve advanced massively over the last few years. They have an initiative underway, and it would be – I think, Jade, our investors in CBRE would be happy with this. If you watched what we’ve done with technology over the years, we’ve said we’re a real estate company that invests in technology to support our business, to enhance our business to enable our business. We’re looking at artificial intelligence in exactly the same way. We’re not going into the artificial intelligence business. We’re starting with trying to find places where artificial intelligence can make us more efficient and cost-effective and then – and we’ll move from there to having it support our market-facing businesses.
But there’s a lot of hubris around AI now as I think most people would agree, and we’re trying to stay clear of that and be very focused on where we can definitively help our business and invest in it as rational [ph] patient and an rational amount.
Jade Rahmani: Thank you very much.
Operator: Thank you. Our final question comes from Patrick O’Shaughnessy from Raymond James. Please go ahead.
