All those things are very much pointing us in the right direction. What I would say is, and you know this better than anybody right, this isn’t going to necessarily be linear and we’ve said that before. So we can’t yet promise consistent organic growth. We can see significant improvements certainly relative to last year. We believe, we’re on our way to sustainable organic growth, but I don’t want to overpromise at this point, given to your points on the challenges in EMEA and some of the lack of clarity at this point in the pipeline that we have on the institutional side.
Dan Fannon: Thank you. That’s helpful.
Operator: Our next question comes from Nigel Pittaway from Citigroup. Nigel, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Nigel Pittaway: Great. Thanks, very much. Just a quick question if I could on the comp ratio guidance. So obviously, you’ve had I think 50.1% first quarter, 45.6% second quarter, but you’re still guiding to the mid-40s. So that obviously implies that it does come down a bit in the last two quarters, is that a reasonable assumption?
Roger Thompson: Yes, that’s reasonable Nigel. The first quarter is always high given timings particularly in the US, but that guidance of mid-40s still applies.
Nigel Pittaway: Right. So, presumably that means, it’s going to come through the comp expense, right because, your LTIP guidance really hasn’t moved. So, is that the way I’m looking at it?
Roger Thompson: Yes.
Nigel Pittaway: Okay. Yes. All right. And then a similar vein, just on the tax rate, obviously, you’re reiterating that at 24% to 26% even that it’s 22.2% this quarter? And any reason why it was particularly low this quarter and reverts back up again?
Roger Thompson: Yes. It’s really that how it’s calculated. You need to exclude the NCI. If you exclude NCI, our ETR in the second quarter is 23.9%. So, it’s basically at the lower end of our guidance of 24% to 26%. And again, I’d stick with that guidance of 24% to 26%.
Nigel Pittaway: Okay. Great. Thanks.
Operator: Our next question comes from John Dunn from Evercore ISI. John, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
John Dunn: Good morning guys. You talked about EMEA and some of the drag there. But can you just talk about, maybe, where you’re seeing gross sales overseas, both regionally and then strategy-wise?
Ali Dibadj: Sure. So, look, we are seeing a significant pickup in institutional business overseas, particularly in actually the EMEA region. I mentioned earlier on large institutional clients in the insurance world entrusting us with their and their policyholder’s capital. Hopefully we’ll be good stewards of that. Similarly, very, very sophisticated sovereign wealth funds, for example in the Middle East have looked to us for help. We’re very proud to serve them and their citizens. And we’re finding also in Asia, some interest from the institutional side as well and also intermediary flows looking relatively better in those regions. The core kind of issue for us as we mentioned before is in the intermediary space. And again, we are setting ourselves up for when the wind is at our backs with increased activity, with great products, with fantastic performance, with great world-class service from our salespeople.
Right now, the win is at everybody’s space including ours. The good news is, even in that market, we’re not losing share. In fact, I would argue we’re gaining a little bit of share in that marketplace. So again, we’re setting ourselves up for the future. But the macro headwinds are clearly there in the EMEA intermediary area and we just want to remind for that.
