Devin Ryan: Great. Good morning. Just a bigger picture question around really the demand for advice. I mean, the one thing we always look at to think about kind of the advisory market is just looking at global M&A volumes. And I think a lot of people track that as kind of a proxy for what’s happening. But as the market continues to evolve, which is much more than that and all the other capabilities it brings for clients. And so, wanted to just get a little bit of a sense of how, John, you would just frame the — how the demand for advice more broadly has evolved or changed? How you go to market with clients, and how that’s changed? And just really also the willingness of clients to pay for other types of advice beyond just M&A capabilities.
John Weinberg: Thank you for the question. Our philosophy is that, we want to become the strategic advisor for our clients. And so, when we enter a go-to-client situation, what we want to do is, we want to build very strong relationships with the senior decision makers, offer what we think are best-in-class capabilities and products, and really try and help them with the things that are important to them. In the very early days of the firm, I think we were doing that, but we were also — we were limited by having a much more — much smaller client — product base, and we didn’t have quite as many products to offer the clients. Now, we have a much broader suite of products. And as a result, we can go into CEOs and CFOs and heads of M&A and we can offer them a much broader set.
And we’re finding that it’s really — it’s giving us real opportunity to do more for clients. And whether that’s going in and having activist advisory assignments and really beginning the relationship that way or coming in with interesting ideas for growth, or whether it’s looking at capital structures, we’re able to do all of those things. And as a result, I think we’re actually able to create more connectivity and have a much better ongoing set of dialogs that I think really help us bond with clients. So from our standpoint, what we’ve invested in and what we’ve done is really starting to have some real impact. And I think we’re really trying to broaden our reach with respect to clients. And so, over time, we’re investing more in more clients and building that client base.
We will be successful if we’re able to continue to build the client base and offer them products that they think are best-in-class and very, very importantly to be able to put advisors in front of them who they will value at the highest level. So the answer is, I think the model is feeling good right now.
Devin Ryan: Okay. And John, just one clarification on just their willingness to pay for types of advice beyond just something that’s transactional.
John Weinberg: Understood. We’re definitely getting advisory fees. Debt advisory fees, restructuring advisory fees, we’re able to really get fees. And so, on the one hand, merger deal fees are really always going to be the big driver of revenue for the firm, I think, just because the transaction driven fees are actually some of the best. I really think that we’re having a larger and larger base fees that are being paid for that are non-transactional and very much advisory. So, I guess, the answer to your question is, we’re building that and I think that the more expertise and broader our product set is, the more we’re able to get that. And if we’re successful, we’re able to do a merger and then maybe also have debt advisory and be able to have that connectivity from different parts of the transaction where we’re able to actually charge fees.
