Curtis Buser: Brian, good question. And look, I’m incredibly proud of what Carlyle and the entire team has achieved ’21, ’22 because we set out a target of $1.6 billion for ’24, $800 million of FRE, $800 million of carry for $1.6 billion of pretax fee. We’ve swapped that from an outcome perspective already in ’21 and in ’22. So FRE at $834 million this past year, 40% up, I care much more about FRE dollars and growth in FRE dollars than I care about margins. Look, margin is a tool to generate FRE dollars. And so whatever we can do to create more dollars, one tool is creating — is by margin. But however, I can get it, I’m going to get it. And you’re right, we set a target of 40% of FRE margin by 2024. ’23, I think, will probably be more on the flattish size to ’22, which will then cause pressure for ’24 to get to that number.
I still think we can do it. Look, we grew from 33% to 37%, ’21 to ’22. So there’s no reason we can’t do that in ’23 to ’24, but time will tell. And look, again, it’s about growing FRE dollars. And so if I can get the FRE dollars going in the right way, that’s what I’m going to do.
Brian Bedell: That’s loud and clear. And then maybe just one last one. Just I guess you talked a lot about fundraising and the headwinds obviously on the private equity side. Maybe if you could just characterize what you’re hearing from LPs and other investors in terms of — now having Harvey on Board and how much of a ballast that is to confidence in the franchise? Or was that not so much of a headwind anyway, it was really just the headwinds in the overall industry and less related to your — to the leadership?
William Conway: This is Bill. In my discussions with the investors, and I was in Europe and I was in Asia and Japan. I would say, that I didn’t see anybody who didn’t invest with us because I was the Interim CEO, and we didn’t have a permanent CEO, and Harvey hadn’t been named at that time. There were perhaps some people who delayed and want to think about the decision and wanted to know who it’s going to be before they committed. But I don’t think there was any — I couldn’t point to any investors said they didn’t do it because we didn’t have the CEO. I think they may have — they didn’t do it now because we didn’t have the CEO, and we’ll see what happens when the CEO is named. I do think a far bigger factor than the CEO is the market.
And the CEO is — most of the fund investors, they care much, much more about the performance of their fund and the individual deals than they care about who the CEO is. So although I’m very excited about Harvey, and I think he’s going to be fabulous, the market, I think, is a more important factor in terms of growth in the PE fundraising.
Operator: Next question comes from Adam Beatty with UBS.
Adam Beatty: Just one question. It’s got 3 parts about the fundraising environment, not necessarily fund specific, but just kind of what you’re seeing. Number one, you mentioned LP liquidity needs. So I’m curious what’s driving those, whether it’s slower monetization or tighter financing or something else? Number two, big theme last year was denominator effect. How far along are LPs in terms of realigning around that and kind of getting past that? And number three is the reopening of LP budgets with the New Year, is it similar to what you’ve seen in past years or better or worse?
