And so the act of trying to get across the bridge from I want to transact, and I have an idea on what I want to do to completing it is very different than, let’s say, our new business activity jumped almost. I think it jumped more than it did in number of submissions in the early parts of the 2021 rebound, the beginnings of the 2021 M&A cycle. The difference then was the Fed was on the way to zero interest rates and money was flowing through every possible opening into the market. And I still think today, money is difficult. So how those two things will organize around themselves and how they will resolved will determine whether this cycle takes off.
James Yaro: Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Maybe you could just speak to the sort of activity that you’re seeing in restructuring this quarter. Has your view of the opportunities that changed in restructuring, given the somewhat better macro backdrop in certain parts. And then maybe if you could contextualize what percentage of revenue was from restructuring. I know you’ve given that various points historically.
Ken Moelis: So we had a pretty significant year-over-year and even quarter-over-quarter increase in restructuring. It’s still about 20% of our overall revenue pool, but our backlog and restructuring, I would say, jumped as much, which you can almost tell by our monthly retainers, which are also up about 70%, 75%. And so those are usually your best precursor to your future success fees in restructuring. I believe very — we have a strong backlog in restructuring. It continues to be more liability management. It’s interesting. You just do not have companies revenues or EBIT, cash flows falling like you did — again, I’ll go back to the financial crisis of 2008, 2009 when cash flows just fell off a cliff and everybody had to really go to what I call full-scale restructuring.
Today, there’s a lot of liability management. And by the way, I know I always get asked on the call, what is liability management. And I’ll just point out, we announced a transaction for Carvana about 10 days ago. And it’s a good example of what liability management is. I won’t say — I don’t like to talk about clients, but it is a very public example of liability management. And we continue to see that being the driving force around restructuring, which we now call Capital Advisory, because that’s really what it’s becoming, which is EBITDA cash flows and revenue aren’t falling dramatically. They’re sometimes just not enough to take care of maturities and in this market provide refinancing alternatives.
James Yaro: Okay. That’s very clear. Thank you very much.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Brendan O’Brien : Good afternoon. This is Brendan O’Brien filling in for Steven. So to start, I just want to ask on the M&A inflection. While the green shoots that you and your peers are citing are encouraging, given the lag between deal processes getting launched to announcements to the actual fee events, it feels like revenues will not be in to pick up in earnest until 2Q realistically of next year. Would be great to get your perspective on when we could actually see this underlying activity begin to hit revenues in your view if we continue along this more positive path. And if the softer revenue environment persists beyond 1Q of next year, how we should be thinking about the comp ratio?
Ken Moelis: So — again, I — compared — in 2021, that didn’t happen, especially when you’re — when the financial sponsors show back up on the scene, because the actual time from transaction to completion is a lot quicker than that. Strategic, you’re right, if we were to enter into a transaction discussion or even an agreement today that could take until the first quarter. But a lot of the private transactions go much quicker than that. I agree with you. I don’t think that will happen only because the financing of those transactions just is more difficult. People aren’t — I was going to say throwing money at you, but the access to capital just isn’t what it was in the old interest rate environment. So it could take longer.
