It’s important to note, Ken, as well, that this has no bearing on our clients or investments in Australia itself. It’s a very important market for us, I was there 10 days ago. I want to go back very soon because we are growing in that market, we’ve been growing for three years and want to continue to do that in a very vibrant market. Roger, you may have some better detail on dates.
Roger Thompson: Yeah. Just so Ken, you can see that we published how the timeline will work, but essentially, we announced that — we announced the process today, we become delisted on the 6th of December. There is then — there is then a — two facilities, a voluntary facility and a compulsory facility that will probably take us through to sort of mid to the backend of the first quarter, which is what Ali’s saying, is really this is a 120-day trading window that this will happen in. In terms of, investor protection, as Ali said, it’s a relatively small amount over a long period of time, but you obviously don’t like any selling pressure. The other thing I’d say is that, this is a transfer or can be a transfer of shares, so it’s not an automatic cancellation.
People — some people will hopefully move over to the NYSE, so hopefully some of that 5% will move over. And then, whilst the buyback is definitely not directly linked to the delist, we will be in the market during the delist period with the buyback as well, so we’ll be buying shares during that period from a buyback perspective. So that’s the process. Happy to take anyone through it in more details, how it works, but it’s more process than anything else.
Ken Worthington: Great. Thanks very much.
Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from John Dunn from Evercore. John, please go ahead.
John Dunn: Hi. Thank you. It was great to see the improvement in the U.S. intermediary channel, maybe could you just talk a little more about the, kind of puts and — in the fund level, puts and takes there and anything that we should be kind of looking out that might move from being a drag to being more of a tailwind?
Ali Dibadj: Sure. We are very pleased with the progress in the U.S. intermediary channel. We put a lot of focus on it from a strategic perspective and we’ve done a few things there. For example, we’ve brought in a new leader of that organization and new people, as well as given blue sky from people internally to supplement the folks we’re bringing in from the external world. So clearly, a change in people was part of it. We put in new KPIs, new compensation metrics, which was very clear on what we wanted to get out strategically from that business and that has clearly delivered. And of course, very much to your point, John, we have a set of products and great performance, to the earlier question, to deliver for our clients. If you think about our products that have done well in that channel, but frankly more broadly, it’s a similar set of products.
We’ve done quite well in the fixed-income business. Part of that is from the innovation that we’ve brought to bear in that channel with our securitized suite of ETFs, and we have more to come on that over time that can deliver for the needs of our clients in the U.S. intermediary channel. We’ve also been quite successful actually on the equity side as well. So things like mid-cap growth have been quite attractive as well in that — in that channel. So it’s actually pretty broad-based. Actually, if you take a step back and you think about the top 10 inflowing strategies from a firmwide perspective, about five of them are in fixed income and about five of them are from equities, which is a really broad balanced focus. But the changes we’ve made in that channel, the excellent efforts of that team there in the U.S. has been fantastic and quite a motivation for the rest of the firm as well.
John Dunn: Got you. And then you mentioned in — you’re investing in 50 — I mean, in institutional distribution. But with the potential coming wave of demand for fixed income, can you talk about the process of how you are getting in front of clients and trying to get prepared for that in both the intermediary channel and then the institutional channel?
Ali Dibadj: Yeah, absolutely. We have a broad suite of fixed-income products and strategies to bring to bear to our clients and institutional channel to build on your intermediary comment earlier. We certainly have the securitized skill set that can be brought to our clients in different forms. I mentioned the ETF form, in particular, intermediary channel, but certainly can be brought in different forms to the institutional pairings as well as separate accounts and otherwise. Obviously, we have some less innovative but storied franchises like the Australian fixed-income franchise, the multi-sector credit franchise, the buy and maintain franchises, whether it be in Europe, U.K. or the U.S., that bring a great performance to our client base in the fixed income — in the fixed-income world.
Now that’s the kind of product-by-product sale, so to speak, but we also have obviously a solutions business, that we can bring to our clients a outcome-oriented solution based on some combination of some of those fixed-income products but also things that are more bespoke in nature. You couple our product-based focus as well as our solutions or outcome-based focus and the intellectual capital that we have among our investors and researchers here to be able to share knowledge to our institutional investors, and we’re finding quite a lot of interest across the board and a lot of activity exactly as you say, as the market is looking like there is some interest in that broad fixed-income asset class.
John Dunn: Thanks very much.
Operator: Thank you. Our final question comes from Marcus Barnard from Bell Potter. Marcus, please go ahead.
Marcus Barnard: Yeah. Good morning, gents. Just interested on the buyback, sort of slightly following on from Ken’s question. I take your points about the strength of the balance sheet leading to the resumption of the buyback, but it seems a bit coincidental that it comes at the same time that you’re doing the CDI delisting. So I guess, question one is, is it — are the two linked or is it just a complete coincidence? And I guess the second question is really, if a discount does open up between the price of the CDIs and the NYSE stock, are you going to use the buyback to help manage that discount? Thanks.
Ali Dibadj: Thanks for the question. So the buyback is not exclusively linked to the delist at all. We obviously think about these things holistically, of course, and the holistic view is that our current liquidity profile, as we mentioned earlier, allows us to both implement the buyback and continue to invest in the business organically and through M&A, whether we buy or partner with others. So that’s the view that we have across the board. Roger, I don’t know if you have anything to add.
Roger Thompson: No, as I said, I think, that the buyback and the delisting are not — are not connected, just looking at our capital. But as you say, it will — it will, absorb some liquidity. The shares are fungible so there isn’t a discount, they equalize between the two. So that’s just looking to happen that way given the type of CDIs, how the CDIs work.
Marcus Barnard: I was thinking more or less of intraday level when New York’s shut but the Australian market’s open.
Roger Thompson: Yeah, the buyback will be done on the New York Stock Exchange.
Marcus Barnard: It will be done on the New York Stock. Okay. Thank you.
