Lazard LTD.

Good morning and welcome to Lazard's four-year and four-quarter 2020 earnings conference call. This call is being recorded. Currently, all participants are in 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 would like to turn the call over to Alexandra Degnan, Lazard's Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Lazard's earnings call for the full year and fourth quarter of 2020. I'm Alexandra Degnan, the company's Head of Investor Relations. In addition to today's audio comments, we have posted our earnings release and an investor presentation, which you can access on our website at Lazard.com. 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. Desire 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 the company's performance. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the comparable GAAP measure is provided in our earnings release and investor presentation. Hosting our call today are Kenneth Jacobs, Lizard's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Adam 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.

Good morning. Today, Lizard reported strong results for the fourth quarter and full year 2020. We achieved record quarterly operating revenue. Financial Advisory had a record quarter with strong performance across practices and regions. Asset management's fourth quarter revenue increased 12% and achieved a record year-end level of AUM. We entered 2021 with significant momentum as we served clients positioning themselves for a post-pandemic recovery. In financial advisory, our M&A activity progressed throughout 2020. Our global announcement volume increased 3% even as the market's volume declined 10%. This reflected strong activity in both the U.S. and Europe. In particular, our volume of French and UK announcements increased 34 percent and 37 percent, respectively, from the prior year. Our preeminent global restructuring practice continued its work on a wide range of complex assignments. In 2020, Lazard ranked number one in the lead tables for completed restructurings globally. As we anticipated, the pace of new restructuring assignments in Europe increased. Our sovereign capital, and private capital advisory businesses all had strong years, as we advise governments, corporations, and partnerships on financing strategy and capital raising. Our private equity secondaries business continues to grow, and we are advising on a significant number of growth equity investments globally. We continue to see opportunities for growth in financial advisory and have increased our pace of lateral hiring. In 2020, we recruited 12 new managing directors globally, plus two more in January of this year. In addition, we are promoting 15 new managing directors in financial advisory this month. 10 of them began their careers here as analysts or associates. Our ability to develop talent organically remains a powerful competitive strength. Our asset management business also had a strong fourth quarter, with higher management and incentive fees reflecting AUM growth and the performance of our strategies. Our assets under management increased by $31 billion, or 14% from the start to the finish of the fourth quarter. Our investments in new strategies and product extensions continue to create new avenues for growth. Our quantitative business achieved net inflows for both the fourth quarter and full year, as did our global equities and our global and multi-regional fixed income platforms. We are also seeing an increase in solutions-oriented mandates as we serve more clients with customized strategies. We continue to invest in asset management's growth through investment in people, technology, and distribution, as well as the development of new funds and the scaling up of existing platforms. In 2020, we introduced eight new strategies for clients across our traditional and alternative platforms. Three of the strategies are from independent teams we recently recruited. As the asset management industry undergoes a wave in consolidation, we see substantial opportunities to accelerate our recruitment of talent and investment teams adding strategies that are complementary to our existing platforms. We also continue to build our talent pool from within. This year, Asset Management will name seven new managing directors in its annual promotion process. Firm-wide, Lazard's record results for the quarter underscore the strength of our diversified business model, our global platform, and our deep culture of client service. We entered 2021 with momentum across our businesses. We see substantial opportunities for growth in both financial advisory and asset management and are investing to capitalize on them. Evan will now provide some color on our results, and then I'll comment on our outlook.