I would say on the fixed income side, the other thing that is notable is we seem to be doing, I would say, significantly better than a lot of our peers are doing at the moment. Not really sure why that is but — and we’re starting to see a lot of inbounds from people who are interested in coming to work for us. I mean, I think their view has been, you guys have grown more than most people over the last 3, 4 years. You guys seem to be doing something right and you guys seem to be the team, I would like to join. So that’s giving us lots of opportunities as well, right? When talent wants to join you, that gives you lots of choice and lots of opportunities. So I guess that’s how we think about it.
Daniel Fannon: Okay. That’s helpful. And then, I guess, building upon that a little bit in terms of future growth. And can you talk about the inorganic backdrop now for M&A and maybe how big of a — I know you have a lot of organic growth that you’re looking to build and been focused on but how do you think about complementing that with M&A as you think about the next kind of 1 to 2 years?
Sean O’Connor: Yes. I think this comes up regularly on our earnings calls. And I think just some historical perspective, we seem to have done a couple of decent-sized M&A deals almost every year or so, with the exception of the COVID period. I mean, certainly, we did our largest acquisition being gained right at the start of COVID. But during COVID, pricing just became crazy to sort of peak earnings and peak multiples and that’s not a good time to be a buyer of the business. So things — we honestly didn’t see anything that interested us. I would say the market is starting to normalize a bit now. We are seeing more opportunities but I’m not sure it’s yet a very conducive environment for us. I mean we tend to be very disciplined around price.
How we can add value to the acquisition. I mean buying a business at a fair price and not being able to do anything to change that business has done absolutely nothing for our shareholders. So we have to make sure we can acquire a business at attractive pricing that we can transform that business in some shape or form. And we just — I think we’re looking at more things now and I think there are more things coming through. But — and some of them look a little bit interesting. But I think we are still a ways away from the environment where we might see ourselves doing something. But you never know. I mean, things can changed pretty rapidly. I would also make the point that we tend to report discrete acquisitions because you sort of have to do that.
But we acquired talent too. Just like what I was talking about with the fixed income business. And when we acquire experienced people or teams of people, they tend to bring business with them. They tend to bring relationships with them, revenue and so on. And those are ways that we can grow sort of inorganically in a way, right, because we’re bringing in new books of business, new capabilities, new product expertise. And we’re doing a lot of that. So that certainly is a much lower risk way for us to grow our business. It’s oftentimes much more impactful in the short term. It just happens to be sort of bite-size or much smaller bite size chunks, right? So we are doing that. And I think the aggregate results of the sort of talent acquisition has been material over the last 3, 4, 5 years.
And we continue to do that. So anyway, hopefully, that’s helpful.
Daniel Fannon: Yes. No, no, that is. And I guess just lastly for me, you have been operating above your long-term target of 15% ROE for some time. As the business scales and grows and diversifies, I mean do we think you’re at a level where we can take that goal should be something above that given the business and how it looks today?
Sean O’Connor: I remember about 10 or 15 years ago, probably, when we had a couple of years in a row when we were below 15% and I got asked the exact same question is, should you lower your long-term target because it doesn’t look realistic. I would say to achieve a 15% ROE in our marketplace and in our sort of environment which is quite competitive over a long period of time, I think, is a compelling and a robust target to try and achieve. I think we’ve also said that there could be long stretches of time where we operate below that target and when we operate above that target because market environment can cause that to happen for periods of time. And I don’t think it’s helpful if we continually change our long-term target, either bringing it down when times are tough, or sort of putting it up when we sort of in a positive environment.
So honestly, I prefer not to do that. I think we’ve embedded in our business and throughout our compensation structures and so on, there’s mentality around, we have to do better than 15%. And I think it’s a challenging target. I think our business is operating above trend a little bit at the moment. Interest rates, obviously, are constructive at the moment. I would say volatility is not anymore, it was. But to your point, there might be, at some point, sort of scale benefits compounded with technology that may cause us to think about raising that level at some point, if we think the sort of entire structure and the cost structure of the business has materially changed. But I’m not sure we want to do that anytime soon but it’s something we should think about, I think.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] I’m showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back to Sean O’Connor for closing remarks.
Sean O’Connor: Thank you. And thanks everyone for joining our first quarter conference call. We look forward to speaking to you in the next 3 months. Thank you.
Operator: Thank you for your participation in today’s conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.
