Joe Simon: And if the fifth light goes off, you’re going to have the opportunity, right?
Ken Moelis: It’s just, I have to wait for them to all watch drive to survive, or else I can’t continue with the analogy. But yes, if — it feels like we’re much closer to the start of the race happening. And at that point, I think it would be tough to find it’s going to be tough; the talent will get busy. And people will stay in their seats again. So, if that happens, I do think we’d slow down as well.
James Yaro: All right, well, we’ll have to watch the newest season. Thanks so much.
Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Steven with Wolfe Research. Steven, your line is open.
Brendan O’Brien: Good afternoon. This is Brendan O’Brien filling in for Steven, I guess to start just on the M&A outlook commentary, your views on how quickly activity could ramp next year, was maybe a bit more optimistic than what we’ve heard from some of your peers, which have indicated that this would be more of a stop-start recovery. Want to get a sense as to whether you’re saying that we could see a ramp and activity that is similar to what we saw during COVID. And I guess, circling back to the drive to survive reference, what is that fifth light in your view that could kickstart activity?
Ken Moelis: Well, that’s a good question, because you’re actually right. I think the reason is, I think yesterday was a big day. I think that — I took yesterday to be the fourth light to tell you the truth. And I might not have the same outlook had it been, had this call been five days ago. So, I have — I just happen to have the benefit of going after the FED yesterday. It felt to me, like they were saying, and I believe that rates have not fully been reflected in the statistics they’re seeing. I do think companies are having much more difficult time, some of the consumption part of the economy has kept GDP up. But I think companies are having enormous problems with the higher rates. And I thought yesterday I read it, that we are starting to look at waiting to see if these rates have issues that we haven’t been able to measure yet.
And so I just want to acknowledge that I don’t think I would have had the exact same commentary that I wouldn’t have thought, again, to stretch the analogy that the fourth light had had gone off on the race. And I do think so we may be one light away from it, where the FED just confirms that we’re at the end of the red cycle. There are several things that can trigger it, would it be COVID like, probably not, I mean, COVID was triggered by a drop of interest rates, I forgot from where to where, but almost zero interest rates and a flooding of the capital markets with money. But I do think it would ramp up pretty quickly. Because there are a lot of transactions, remember, COVID only deferred transactions for three or four months, I guess it was from like the beginning of March to maybe it got triggered again, by July and August.
There’s a two-year backlog of LPs that want capital, sponsors that need to either buy or sell something, and companies that also want to get into the market strategically. So — I don’t, it doesn’t feel like COVID in terms of the drop in cost of money. But maybe the backlog of two years will drive a similar transaction volume.
Brendan O’Brien: That’s right. Thanks. And I guess my follow-up, restructuring was a big driver of the results this quarter. And I know that Joe indicated that you don’t expect this to repeat next quarter. I just wanted to get a sense as to how we should be thinking about, what was typically a seasonally stronger quarter and 4Q. And whether that’s an indication that we should expect some decline in revenues. And if you could give some context around how large of a contributor restructuring was to this quarter’s results, that’d be great?
