Lazard LTD.

Good morning and welcome to Lazard's second quarter 2026 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 zero on your telephone keypad. At this time, I will turn the call over to William Murdoch, Lazard's head strategy and investor relations. Please go ahead.

William Murdoch Thanks, Chelsea. Good morning and welcome to Lazard's earning call for the second quarter and first half of 2026. I'm William Murdoch, head of strategy and investor relations. In addition to today's audio comments, we have posted our earnings release on our website. The 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, achievements, or other events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, if 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 them. Please also note that, unless we state otherwise, all financial measures we've discussed today are non-GAAP-adjusted financial measures. We believe these non-GAAP financial measures are meaningful when evaluating the company's performance. The reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures is a comparable GAAP measure is provided in our earnings release and our investor presentations. Booting our call today are Peter Orszag, Lazard's Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Tracy Farr, Lazard's Chief Financial Officer. After our prepared remarks, Chris Hogbin, Chief Executive Officer of Asset Management, will join as we open for questions. I'll now turn the call over to Peter.

Thank you, William, and thank you to everyone for joining our call today. Firm-wide adjusted net revenue was $786 million for the second quarter and $1.5 billion for the first half of the year. Before Tracy takes you through the numbers, It has now been almost three years since we issued our Lazard 2030 plan, and so it seems appropriate to discuss where we are in our efforts to transform our firm for long-term profitable growth. When we laid out our vision for Lazard 2030, we said we would measure success through relevance, revenue, and returns. We're seeing tangible progress across all three. In the first half of this year, Financial Advisory achieved its strongest announced league table position and many, many more. We believe this expanding client activity is due to our ability to deliver what we call contextual alpha by combining business analysis with broader insight into geopolitics and the regulatory environment. Clients also value that we can connect capital distribution and technology across a broader platform. With our acquisition of Campbell Lutyens, we will establish a third business that will be the leader in global private capital advisory, providing us with a full array of capabilities in private markets to complement our strength in public markets. At the same time, we are rapidly adopting AI and other technologies to serve clients more effectively and enhance productivity as part of our commitment to being the leading AI-enabled independent financial firm on Wall Street. In short, our work to advance Lazard's legacy is well underway. Tracy will now discuss our financial results along with the near-term effects of the investments we've made. Then I'm going to come back to provide more details on the progress we have made that is reinforcing our confidence in increased growth, productivity, and profitability over time.