Brennan Hawken: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. So it looks like as far as corporate finance goes, and you guys had been in this sort of revenue range of about 250 to 300, this quarter came in a little better than that. And we — it seems as though the commentary around the outlook seems to be improving, so are we at a place where we, as long as the environment remains constructive, we can begin to start thinking about how to grow and what a growth trajectory would look like within corporate finance, or is it too early to be calling that?
Scott Beiser: What we’d say is, we’re in step one, which is to get back to normal levels, which is to increase the number of opportunities per banker, increase the percentage of deals that close and shrink the time to close. We think there are more tailwinds and headwinds to make that happen. So we do think it’s in a growing and escalating environment. I think the question we would have is really the speed that it will take to get to normal and what does that trajectory look like, but we do think we’re operating at a more buoyant level than we were last couple of quarters last year or two.
Brennan Hawken: Got it. Thank you very much for that. And then, when we think about previously, you guys had indicated that the MD headcount, I believe was expected to be pretty stable in the fiscal year within Corp Fin. Did that expectation for stability include the expectation of those five, oil, energy bankers moving into corporate finance? Or is that exclusive of that recategorization?
Scott Beiser: I’m not sure we sliced it that specific, when we mentioned this maybe a couple of quarters ago. I mean, we have approximately 220 client facing bankers in corporate finance and the way we count it. And I think what we’ve said is, we always plan to do some acquisitions, that we don’t control the timing of those. I think we believe we’ve been in a normal hiring environment, we have not massively increased amount of hiring, nor slowed down our hiring. And then we have a, I would call it a normal, but still relatively small percentage of departures for a variety of reasons. And based upon all that, we didn’t think there would be much change in our headcount in corporate finance at least through fiscal ’24. And I think that’s going to pan out and — but what we have been talking about the potential move of the oil and gas team internally for a while, like I said, I don’t have a specific thought and said, when we really penciled stuff out a couple quarters ago where we included or not, including, I’d say, ultimately, the eight people that Lindsey mentioned, is still kind of just a rounding percentage in the totality of corporate finances size.
Brennan Hawken: Okay. So what I’m trying to nitpick there, just curious. Thanks for taking the questions.
Scott Beiser: Thanks, Brennan.
Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.
Brendan O’Brien: Good afternoon. This is Brendan O’Brien filling in for Steven. So I guess to start just on the restructuring outlook. The commentary there was similar to what we’ve been hearing from some of your peers. But I just want to get a sense as to whether you would expect rate cuts and any material impact on activity levels. And also, if you could provide some color on whether or not you’re seeing more activity on the liability management or traditional restructuring side at the moment, that’d be great.
Scott Beiser: I’ll take the first part, and Lindsey can take the second. All things being equal, as the economy gets better and better and as interest rates go down, et cetera, it will have some slow down in the restructuring business. Having said that, we still think we’re probably playing a bit of catch up for things that did not run into some level of financial distress due to a governmental intervention over the last several years. And the difference today is, while the financing marketplaces are opening up more, and people are able to do some refinancings, a lot of these companies are still going to be refinancing at much higher interest rates. So it doesn’t necessarily solve their problem and that’s why we think we will be at kind of a elevated level for some time period and this is not a typical call it crisis mode, where you see substantial shrinkage in EBITDA.
This is less about company’s financial performance deteriorating completely, and it’s more about a balance sheet problem. It’s still going to take some while to fix for many companies.
Lindsey Alley: And I think with respect to liability management, given the characteristics of the economy that have been in place since early 2022, liability management continues to play an important role in our restructuring business, and expect that to continue for the foreseeable future. It’s a relatively long runway, though the maturity walls are out long enough that companies have time to have those discussions early on versus a scenario like what we saw in COVID or in the great recession where there was a crisis and it resulted in sort of an immediate impact on the economy. So just given these characteristics, liability management has and will continue to play an important role.
