Lazard Ltd (NYSE:LAZ) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Now, we have all three factors yellow, if not heading in a couple of cases towards something that almost resembles green. I think you’re likely to see €“ start to see some pickup in activity. And then the catalyst on this, I think they continue to be very similar to what they were out of the downturn. The energy transition is going to be an enormous catalyst for activity in the M&A space. I think we’re going continue to see enormous pressure on re-shoring into the U.S., which again will lead to some M&A activity, but quite a bit of infrastructure investment around many of these projects. You still have some restructuring activity, which I think will continue over the next couple of years. It may not get to the level that we’ve seen in previous cycles.

I don’t think it will, but may last longer and such. So, I think overall, we’re seeing pick up in dialogue, we’re seeing obviously an increased rate of activism, which usually results in corporate events, and with credit conditions improving, those corporate events can take place. And so, that’s likely to lead to some pickup in announcements as the year progresses. So, that’s kind of the advisory side. That asset management, I think just improving markets and the shift towards where we sit in the spectrum of investing and the fact that the dollar is weaker really tends a better environment for us, probably a better environment for us than we’ve seen in several years.

Brennan Hawken: Excellent. Thank you for that detailed run down, Ken. That’s appreciated. And also, thanks for the asset management update through Jan 27. Evan, I believe you’re on usually the end of the month can be pretty active for flows given your institutional orientation. So, any insights into whether that plus 200 million in flows is going to hold and we would see a positive month or how should we be thinking about that?

Kenneth Jacobs : Brennan, as you said, the last couple of days, you can always see some movement and some of that we don’t actually see right away, sometimes take a couple of days post quarter-end until you get all the specific movement on some of the models and wraps and other things that we manage. So, it does take a couple extra days post quarter-end, but so far it feels like a good €“ feels like a good month for us from a flow perspective. I would say, it’s very similar to what Ken mentioned earlier. We started to see that moderation, the more balance in our flow story to November. December had its usual quarter-end, year-end type reallocations, we also €“ with the volatility in the markets and the, sort of the shift up, we had less people wanting to put money to work and to allocate.

As we got into this year, we’re continuing to see good activity levels, a lot of interest in the types of products that we specialize in deep research fundamental investing that we do, the market certainly has moved a little bit away from the more growth and momentum and more towards relative value. And that space, the quality space, which is where of focus. And we’re seeing good activity levels from clients, lots of interest in a whole host of our products across all of our platforms. And so, so far, it feels more balanced as we said towards year-end and that trend is continuing as we got into the beginning of this year as well.

Brennan Hawken: Great. Thanks for that.

Operator: Our next question comes from from Goldman Sachs.