Lazard LTD.

Good morning and welcome to Lazard's second quarter and first half 2020 earnings conference call. This call is being recorded. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the remarks, we will conduct a question and answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the call, please press the star key followed by the zero on your touchtone phone. At this time, I will turn the call over to Alexandra Degnan, Lazard Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you, Anita. Welcome to Lazard's earnings call for the second quarter and first half of 2020. I'm Alexandra Degnan, the company's Head of Investor Relations. In addition to today's audio comments, we've posted our earnings release and investor presentation, which you can access on our website. A replay of this call will also be available on our website later today. Before we begin, let me remind you that we may make forward-looking statements about our business and performance. There are important factors that could cause our actual results, level of activity, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, those factors discussed in the company's SEC filings, which you can access on our website. Lizard assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of these forward-looking statements and assumes no duty to update these forward-looking statements. Today's discussion also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are meaningful when evaluating a company's performance. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the comparable GAAP measures is provided in our earnings release and investor presentation. Hosting our call today are Kenneth Jacobs, Lizard's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Evan Russo, Chief Financial Officer. They will provide opening remarks and then we will open the call to questions. I'll now turn the call over to Ken.

Thank you, Ali. Good morning. Our second quarter and first half results reflect steady operating performance across our business in an uncertain environment. Financial advisory results for the second quarter highlighted the breadth of our advisory services. As we expected, the pace of M&A completions and announcements declined in line with the market. However, strategic discussions with clients are increasingly constructive. especially in Europe as countries ease their lockdown restrictions. A strong quarter of restructuring and capital markets advisory largely offset slower M&A activity as we serve clients with immediate liquidity issues caused by the pandemic's economic shock. We advised on a number of the largest assignments in the U.S. energy and retail sectors. We have also completed the successful restructuring of PG&E, the largest utility bankruptcy in U.S. history. For the first half of the year, Lazard was the global leader in announced restructuring assignments by dollar volume. We are serving clients with expertise built over decades and through cycles in capital structure, capital raising, debt negotiations, restructuring, and exchange offers, all supported by our global platform and industry sector teams. Our sovereign advisory practice has also seen a significant increase in activity. We are advising countries in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East on debt restructuring. and we continue to advise governments and developed economies on programs to support the private sector. In asset management, our platforms benefited from the rebound in global capital markets during the second quarter. Our assets under management increased 11% from the first quarter. While we experienced net outflows for the quarter, gross inflows were strong. Our quantitative strategies continued to gain traction, as did our convertible and international equity strategies. We continue to invest in the growth of asset management through the development and scaling up of new and existing platforms. Recently, we announced the launch of US and global sustainable equity strategies, which are receiving strong demand. Our sustainable equity strategies are built on the foundation of our longstanding efforts in ESG integration, where we have a unique sector-based approach to materiality assessment. We see significant opportunity for Lazard in this space, and are committed to further deepening of our ESG research capabilities and investment solutions for clients. Before I turn the call over to Evan, I want to comment on the evolution of Lazard's day-to-day operations during the pandemic. At the time of our last earnings call, virtually all of our people were working from home in response to the global health crisis. Since then, many of our employees have returned to the office with guidelines to maintain social distancing. We have adapted quickly to a hybrid environment with a number of our people in the office and others at home. A silver lining to this experience has been the improvements in efficiencies, internal communications, and other positive cultural changes that might otherwise have taken years to accomplish. As we move forward, we are taking steps to ensure that we lock in these improvements for the benefit of all our stakeholders. Once again, I want to thank our people for their resiliency and commitment to upholding Lazard standards of excellence, even in the most challenging conditions. Evan will now provide more color on our second quarter and first half results. Then I will comment on our outlook.