Piper Sandler Companies (NYSE:PIPR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Chad Abraham: Yeah. And I would just add. I mean, obviously, the vast majority of projects we’re financing are eventually going to happen. And so, yeah, we will get back to the run rate. Some of the project finance, project development, real estate type stuff that is specific to can you get it financed with that package, that may be on the margin in a much higher rate environment more difficult, but most of the rest of the public finance stuff or projects that are happening, I mean, they are eventually going to happen.

James Yaro: Okay. That’s really clear. Thank you for that. Chad, maybe, I could just ask you about the competitive environment for hiring. On the one hand, the bulge bracket is pulling back and there have been some recent deals that have actually taken out some of the publicly traded and independent peers, and I would suspect that means more capacity against that number or maybe all of your independent peers have talked about this being a golden hiring opportunity. So, how is — how have these two things impacted the ability and cost of bringing in new hires today?

Chad Abraham: Yes. I would say, I mean, certainly for me, the last four or five months, we’re spending more time than ever talking to candidates. I think you just look across the board, the amount of successful platforms. It’s a smaller number. So, there are certain places people want to be, the reality though is just because someone makes a move — wants to make a move doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a great hire. So, it’s just a lot of scrutiny on quality, lot of scrutiny on in tough markets can people perform, and we really don’t want more bankers that are just good in great markets. So, we’re definitely seeing more hiring. I would say relative — I mean, part of why it is interesting is the packages the way they’re structured, they’re not as extreme as they’ve been in 2021 when things were great, so that does make it more interesting, but I would also say, for us, we’re conscious of the fact that over the last few years, we’ve grown faster than most.

So, the reality is we’re still adding, we’re going to add at a measured pace, but it’s not like, I mean we don’t need to add anybody to get significant uplift because you know productivity is at pretty low point historically. So, I think, we’ll keep adding like we have at a pretty measured pace. We’ll also stay very focused on quality and productivity, and we’ll continue to manage out underperformers or people that after a couple of tough years, it’s sort of obvious they’re not hitting productivity.

James Yaro: That makes lot of sense. And then just one more, just sort of out of left field. But,we just saw the Basel III endgame proposal for the big banks, there’s clearly declining capacity for trading balance sheet across both the U.S. and Europe. I think the proposal yesterday for the U.S. was worse than expectation. So, I guess, — and there are not that many independent full service investment banks like yourselves out there. So, when you think about the opportunities, does this additional regulation at all change your ability to take market share in some of your more balance sheet intensive businesses?