Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc. (NYSE:MMC) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

John Q. Doyle: Yes. No, thanks. Sorry to jump in on you there. They are relatively modest in size, but we are being thoughtful about the portfolio in that respect. And for the most part, they’ve happened at Mercer. Again, we recently announced the divestiture of what really is an admin business primarily or really entirely an admin business. And so not core, lower growth, capital intensive, operations and candidly, there are better owners of assets like that than us, others that can bring greater scale and technology and solutions. So, we don’t expect to do a lot of it, but where we see the opportunity and it makes us better and stronger and enables us to invest in our core, we’ll take steps to do that. Thank you, Paul. Operator. Next question.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Jing Li with KBW.

Jing Li : Hi there. Thank you for taking my questions. Just a question on Asia Pacific business. Can you add some color on — since I see that just a rate of some for this quarter? So, do you expect it to continue for the coming quarters?

John Q. Doyle: Sure, Jing. Maybe I’ll ask Martin to talk about it, but we’re very excited about the possibility for growth in Asia and in the Pacific, not just that Marsh, but across our businesses as I mentioned as a leadership team, we’re recently in Australia and we see lots of possibilities. But Martin, maybe you could talk a little bit about the quarter and your outlook.

Martin South: Okay. I think the important thing when we look at international, we like to look at growth over longer periods of time. With regard to APAC 6% underlying growth in the quarter. It’s 8% year-to-date. We think that’s much more indicative of what the growth would be like over a longer period of time. Likewise, we probably have slightly elevated growth in Latin America, we’d expect that to normalize over a period of time as well. So, I just think it’s something that we’re not worried about. We have a great business in Asia Pac and feel very confident about the future.

John Q. Doyle: Lots of opportunities. It’s one of the parts of the world where there’s a meaningful protection gap. So, Jing, do you have a follow-up?

Jing Li : Yes. So, for this quarter, 6% I guess. So, you mean you guys mean it’s kind of like a one-time thing. So, continue to be a double-digit kind of going forward?

John Q. Doyle: Sure. Yes, we’re not going to give specific guidance on Asia Pacific underlying revenue growth, but we do think it’s an area, a region that we’re very well positioned for strong growth going forward as we speak. As Martin mentioned, we’re well positioned in that market. We’ve got terrific distribution throughout most major countries throughout the region and we’re excited about it. It’s one of the ways in which JLT made us quite stronger. So, thank you, Jing. Operator, are there any more questions?

Operator: I’m showing no questions at the moment. [Operator Instructions].

John Q. Doyle: Operator, we can wrap up if there are no more questions.

Operator: I’m showing we do have a question, a follow-up.

John Q. Doyle: Okay.

Operator: One moment, please. Our follow-up question comes from Robert Cox with Goldman Sachs.

Robert Cox: Hey, just one follow-up on the M&A spec and capital markets activity. Can you give us a sense of whether that continued maybe just directionally if that was more or less of a headwind in this quarter versus the first quarter?

John Q. Doyle: Sure. Maybe I’ll ask Martine to unpack our growth at Mercer Investments a bit, Martine?