And I want them in key places where I’m interested in having a location if it’s not a bolt-on in New York, Milwaukee, Boston or Richmond. And so there are always so many firms that really fit the criteria that I’m looking for that are — that check all the boxes and they have to be ready at the right time. I would say it’s quite active in discussions. I alluded in the last question and the fact that we’re always looking at these things and busy, that includes hires, by the way, that can advance the company on behalf of our shareholders. And I would just characterize it as a busy period. I have no idea if any of those will land, and I wouldn’t want to suggest anything is imminent to anyone on the call. You just don’t know. There are so many things that can change between conversations now and what ultimately happens, but I’ll conclude by saying we are quite active.
We’re also seeing, yes, Chris, I’ll just add one other thing, sorry. We’re also, as I predicted, in the last couple of calls, the increase in interest rates, while it’s not welcomed in some ways, certainly, its effect on markets and people’s outlook combined with, not to mention the geopolitical concerns that we have that, I think it’s just part of the general feeling people have. I’ve actually welcomed it because I think it will lead to more rational capital allocation decisions ultimately. Finally, people are getting paid for their fixed income. It just creates a lot of disruption in the meantime. But I’m seeing a moderating in the market that’s actually healthy on the M&A side from my perspective.
Christopher Sakai: Okay. Great. Thanks to that. And then my other question was on — there was a slight uptick in travel and entertainment expense. My question there is, is this coming basically what we should expect coming out of COVID? And what should we expect with that expense going forward?
Richard Hough: Yes, you can expect that to increase coming out of COVID. It’s pretty variable. So I’m not going to provide guidance what I think is going to happen in the future. My general view and I know Scott shares this as our CFO, is this is a good thing. You want to see that increasing. This means we’re out there, we’re active. Our clients want to see us. We’re seeing prospects. And even, for example, on the — just — that’s the high net worth side, but on the institutional side, so much of it was via Zoom and no travel, and it’s way better to meet prospective clients, consultants and others face-to-face. And that is starting to occur more often as well. So, yes, I would expect a more normalized environment. When it was lower during COVID, we made that point.
I don’t know what that might look forward to going forward. And I should point out, there’s also been more international opportunities. I’ve talked about that in the past. So that’s a little bit more expensive travel as well.
Christopher Sakai: Okay. Great. Thanks for the answers.
Richard Hough: You’re welcome.
Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Rick Hough for any closing remarks.
Richard Hough: Great. Thank you very much. I really appreciate all of our shareholders for joining us today for the update on the third quarter. As we navigate this interesting environment, and I think we’ve got tremendous opportunities ahead. This is a company, as I said before, that has been through environments like this for 22 years, running this business through all sorts of ups and downs, and we’ve successfully navigated any number of issues and growing our business profitably. The kind of uncertainty that we face creates opportunity whenever one of our businesses is affected. And we’re feeling very good about that and the team that we have here in our partners in terms of how we work hard to position ourselves for success. So I look forward to talking to you again soon and I really appreciate everyone joining us. Thanks so much.
Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.
