Devin Ryan: Got it. Perfect. Just to clarify there, Paul, and then I will hop back in the queue. So when you talk about kind of the engagement with clients and the momentum because again, we see the deal announcements, but we don’t get to see a lot of the behind the scenes kind of new client wins and even some time mandates way before announcement. Like any kind of either qualification or quantification around that type of momentum that you are seeing and maybe how that’s progressed over the last couple of years, just that’s kind of behind the scenes that we don’t see as well? Thank you.
Paul Taubman: Sure. I will just — I will give you a few highlights. One of which is, we continue to build out our geographic presence and we continue to build out our industry presence. So we are now at a point where we have had enough success and we have a critical mass that we opened an office in Paris and I think that follows what have been very considerable successes in France and across all of Europe. Our European business continues to build out. It continues to establish its brand and its presence, and as we have more industry colleagues who can help and as we leverage the fact that we have a differentiated culture, we are doing more and more on a cross-border transatlantic way that really wasn’t available for the taking a few years ago.
The second is, the way in which we have integrated our Camberview capabilities into Strategic Advisory and where we are from shareholder engagement, strategic IR, activist defense and the like, and how wrapped in that is and the opportunities and the boardrooms that we are present in, as well as the commercial opportunities for the firm. And then the third is, just as we have continued to build out our holistic capital markets advisory business, the ability to be much more present as it relates to direct lending initiatives, to be working more closely with Restructuring to deal with companies that are not yet ripe for traditional Restructuring but benefit greatly from the capabilities. I think those are just a handful of examples where we are touching more clients, far more clients and these are an elevated revenue potentials.
The only thing that I cannot control is just how quickly the macro environment sort of shifts into gear and then it becomes very much a micro story, which is client by client, what’s the cadence of their of their reengagement and then how quickly does some of these mandates translate into revenues. But it’s all being built and we are very comfortable with where we are at this point and we love the fact that we have this diverse but highly integrated group of businesses, which continually present more opportunities for us. And I guess one last thing I’d address is, we have gotten increasingly better at integrating the Park Hill sponsor relationships into our broader sponsor coverage and that becomes another opportunity where we are more present and better able to commercialize some of these relationships.
Devin Ryan: Great. I will leave it there. Thank you very much.
Operator: We will take our next question from James Yaro with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
James Yaro: Good morning, Paul and Helen.
Paul Taubman: Good morning.
James Yaro: I just wanted to start with a little bit more on the M&A backdrop. The differences between the dialogues with sponsors and strategics, and how your expectations have changed or what your expectations are for how the mix of M&A should evolve in 2023 and 2024?
Paul Taubman: Well, look, I was always taught that trees don’t grow to the sky and the notion that financial sponsors would just be all things at all times and M&A dialogues. I just — I am not sure that was the right extrapolation from where we have been over the last few years. I think there’s no doubt that financial sponsors as they continue to accumulate assets, as they continue to move into broad and broader reach of strategies, as they look at traditional buyouts as well as minority investments, venture and the like, they are going to become an increasingly important part of the ecosystem. But that doesn’t mean that it all becomes all about sponsors all the time and I think there’s no doubt that in a risk-on world where capital was incredibly plentiful, where rates were at historic lows and where LPs we are very comfortable pushing a lot more dollars into alternatives that you saw a meaningful spike up.
I think what we are just seeing now is a little bit more of a regression to the mean where this is an opportunity for corporates to take advantage of the fact that the capital deployment that’s coming from sponsors has slowed and it slowed for a few reasons, one of which is, as the fundraising environment becomes more difficult, sponsors are appropriately more conservative in capital deployment, that’s a macro trend. And then at the micro level, when it’s harder to secure committed financing or where the committed financing is available, but far more costly, it just makes it more difficult to be everywhere in strategic dialogues. And I think that there’s a recognition in corporate boardrooms that at least in the near-term while the playing field may not have tilted to strategics, it’s at least leveled.
It’s high level or tilted a bit their way and I suspect that you will see with the increasing pickup in activity in to be more corporate-led than sponsor-led. But, ultimately, this all gets back into equilibrium and sponsors will be and has been an incredibly important part of the ecosystem, but I am not sure it’s going to be the dominant part of the ecosystem.
James Yaro: That’s incredibly helpful, Paul. I just want to touch on one other one, which is you are obviously very focused on investing in new talent. So maybe if you could just touch on how the hiring backdrop has evolved versus earlier in the year, whether you are seeing better opportunities to bring in top talent, and then just sort of what your hiring aspirations are for 2023 and whether that could impact the comp ratio trajectory at all for the coming year?
