Chad Abraham: Yes. I mean I’m in my 33rd year of doing this, obviously, have seen some elections, have certainly been asked about elections a lot. I think people spend a lot of time on it. I would say the few times, both for advisory and ECM that, we’ve actually looked at the long-term data. It doesn’t have that much impact on either of those businesses. But there’s definitely some short-term noise that can be created. I mean, certainly for our healthcare business, every time you get a lot of talk about regulating different pricing. That impacts healthcare. I definitely think in our financials business, people will look at the administration and figure out, is it going to be as difficult to get depository transactions done. So, while I think there’ll be a lot of noise. I think, if you just look at the trends long-term, it doesn’t have that big of impact.
Brendan O’Brien: That’s helpful. And I guess something a bit more tangible. The OCC gave new guidance that eliminated the expedited review process for bank mergers. I know it’s still early days, but would you expect this to change the velocity of activity? Or would it simply prolong deal cycles and therefore, the eventual revenue tailwind, if and when bank consolidation were to really pick up?
Chad Abraham: Yes. I mean, I think what our team is certainly feeling now is the level of activity and conversation has picked up. I would also say if you just look at the empirical data, even from this year. We’ve already been on a small handful of depository transactions. So, I think we think it’s going to pick up. I do think all the noise around regulatory activity – I mean, bank CEOs talk – to other bank CEOs and if it’s a hassle, and it takes longer and it adds risk, that uncertainty always scares people. So, I certainly don’t think any of that’s going to help, but I think it’s against the backdrop where – the environment is going to just warrant consolidation as a way to drive more earnings. And that’s certainly what we’re seeing in it. But it’s going to be a real slow recovery there.
Brendan O’Brien: Okay. Thanks for the color, Chad. Thanks for taking my questions.
Operator: Thank you. We’ll go next to Mike Grondahl from Northland Securities.
Mike Grondahl: Hi. Thank you. So Chad, we’re in a new year, 2024. What are your top two strategic priorities for ’24? And then just secondly, how should we think about the growth of MD headcount the next year or two?
Chad Abraham: Yes, I would say, it’s hard to just pin the priorities down to a couple, if I had to. I’ll give you a couple. Certainly, we’ve talked for years about, our interest in wanting to increase our market share dramatically in technology and software. I think, when you look at our largest industry teams, and it played out last year, by far, the two largest are financials and healthcare, we had a big year. In energy, and I think certainly in our diversified and industrials business, as we’ve added enough pieces that, that’s a big leg on the stool. But overall, we’re going to be disappointed over the next five years, if we can’t get the tech and software business, to a similar size with healthcare and financials. And we’ve obviously made a lot of those investments.
Last year was a pretty tough year in the tech advisory fee pool to have that play out. So, we expect quite a bit of improvement there. And then I would say if I could just highlight, one other strategic priority for us in advisory is – or in advisory is just work with PE clients, the type of work we’re doing with PE clients, whether it’s some GP advisory, looking more at other services you can offer that PE client base. We really have a strategic advantage in the middle market that shows through in our results. It shows through in most of our industry teams with private equity, we had a really, really good year in debt capital raising in our debt advisory business and the vast majority of that is related to sponsors. So, I think we’re just – we’re going to look at how do you press that advantage and continue to gain share.
And how can we offer more products and services for what, we think is going to continue to be a growing PE fee pool. Or your second question was MD headcount. I think…
Mike Grondahl: Yes, how to think about – yes, head count, MDs in banking?
Chad Abraham: Yes. For us, nothing has really changed. We always kind of talk about, on average, trying to add five to seven net MD headcount. Obviously, we’ve grown faster than that if you look at the last five years. But that average is in the acquisitions we’ve done. So, we always put that on top. I would say we went a little slower on sort of external hiring, just given the environment. I would say just sort of given our momentum, and success in just the overall environment, we are seeing a lot more opportunity early this year. And obviously, we got to be careful with that. So, we – there might be some chances to accelerate that, but I think, we’re sort of banking on the steady Eddie 5 to 7 adds that – consistent with the last several years.
Mike Grondahl: Okay. Hi, thank you.
Operator: And at this time, I’ll turn it back over to Mr. Abraham for any additional or closing remarks.
Chad Abraham: All right. Thank you, operator, and everyone that joined. We very much look forward to updating you on our first quarter results. Have a great day.
Operator: That does conclude today’s conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
