So, we — I definitely see improved business. I don’t want to try to comment as to how steep the curve of the improvement will be. But certainly as we start the year, we’re seeing improved engagement and our pipelines and our engagements are improving. And simply there’s a lot to do. There’s been a lot of strategic and financial considerations and decisions that have been delayed in the face of inflation at 8% and the Fed rising 500 basis points very quickly. That certainly puts a damper on the timing of activity. And now as we see that stabilizing and in fact the consensus is that that’s going to go down you’re going to see improved activity. I think that’s pretty clear.
Chris Allen : Thanks guys. That’s it for me.
Operator: We will take our next question from Brennan Hawken with UBS.
Brennan Hawken : Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Curious it was a pretty nice growth in the third-party bank balances. So curious whether or not that was driven by client action such as seeking out of excess FDIC, or was this more like an asset decision where you guys sold your loan and didn’t see loan growth so allocated to capture the yield?
Ron Kruszewski : I think there’s as AI read and listened looking at some of The Street’s comments on this. I’d love to take a moment just to clarify how we look at that all, right? I view third-party bank sweep balances to be part-and-parcel part of our sweep program, all right? We control the — if you will the valve on what we want to do. So if we it’s just where we’re allocating our deposits. So that is just deposits that we’re choosing now not to have on the balance sheet of Stifel. There if you will diverted to third-party banks. No one is making that decision other than us is the best way to say that. And we could turn around and bring those back on balance sheet as needed or increase it. So you need to look at in my opinion you have to look at sweep deposits and third-party combined.
Jim Marischen: Yes. And the decision to push some of that sweep some of the sweep dollars back was based upon some of the loan sales we talked about in the prepared remarks as well as just general elevated cash balances of the bank. So again, the revenue associated with that just moves in the income statement it’s showing up in asset management revenues rather than NII, but you’re getting a similar return in either location.
Brennan Hawken: Yes. Thanks for clarifying that. Appreciate it. And then Ron you made reference to some of the hires that you all have made in the bond trading business. And I know you guys have referenced recruiting through much of the past year. But we noticed that the Institutional MDs were actually down a bit not by large just but one but I would have thought that that would have been growing just given the focus, right? So what drove that to be sort of flattish? And was there some movement under the surface that maybe like we can appreciate just by looking at the number in and of itself?
Ron Kruszewski: Yes. I mean look it could have been up one, okay? And then I would you’ve had the same question. It’s down one. I think that we see — since 2019 we see our MDs are up some what do we say 33%, okay? And most of those MDs that there’s been is in banking in terms of leveling it out. And look we have a lot of capability here. I think that our viewpoint is that we’re not quickly going back to 2021 levels. And we not only want market share we want to make money. And so we’re balancing those. You can — it becomes it’s a big strategic decision to really hire into what you think is going to be a very robust market. And if that doesn’t happen that causes other problems. So we’re being balanced as we always are, but we have very capable bankers, very capable services and we are well-positioned as we sit here today for rather significant improvement in the market everyone will do well including our shareholders we need to drop this activity down in EPS.
Brennan Hawken: Got it. Thanks, Ron. And for the record, the symbol wasn’t what matters plus or minus. It was the flattish.
Ron Kruszewski: I know. I know. But if – you know, look one of the things that just good. Yes, when we go back to the other question also remember and we see this on the Wealth Management side and I think this drives activity. And a lot of our clients that have invested in alternatives in the private equity our private equity needs to return money to limited partners, okay? They want to raise new funds but you also need to have realizations and return capital. And that’s been on pause a little bit. So as I can see a lot of things that are requiring some transactions to get done so that private equity can sort of recycle the capital back. You can’t sit there on these investments for 15 years. And so we definitely have to see a lot of discussions around the broad topic of returning capital to limiteds.
Brennan Hawken: On that Ron since you’ve mentioned that I’d love to throw in another question here. Like have you we have seen the volumes pick up on the announcements but it has mostly been on the strategic side. When you look at your backlog, are you starting to see financial sponsors getting more active and preparing to monetizing as well, or was that more a prospective expectation you know just based upon some of the dynamics that you laid out. Or like are you seeing early signs or leading indicators of the activity pickup?
