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The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BK)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Thu, Apr 21, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call hosted by BNY Mellon. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Please note that this conference call will be recorded and will consist of copyrighted material. You may not record or rebroadcast these materials without BNY Mellon's consent. I will now turn the conference over to Ms. Valerie Haertel. Ms. Haertel, you may begin.

Valerie C. Haertel - Global Head-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome, everyone, to the BNY Mellon First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. With us today are Gerald Hassell, our Chairman and CEO; Todd Gibbons, our CFO; as well as members of our executive leadership team. Our first quarter earnings materials include a financial highlights presentation that will be referred to in the discussion of our results and can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website. Before Gerald and Todd begin, let me take a moment to remind you that our remarks today may include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated or implied by our forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. These factors include those identified in the cautionary statement in the earnings press release, the financial highlights presentation, and those identified in our documents filed with the SEC that are available on our website, bnymellon.com. Forward-looking statements made on this call speak only of today, April 21, 2016, and we will not update forward-looking statements. Now I would like to turn the call over the Gerald Hassell. Gerald? Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Valerie, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us to discuss our first quarter performance and our progress in driving our long-term growth strategy. Now in difficult market conditions, actually more so than reflected in our underlying assumptions of our Investor Day target, we begin delivered what I think would be considered healthy results in almost any environment. Year-over-year earnings per share were $0.73, up 9%. Adjusted for the roughly $0.01 of litigation and restructuring charges, we had operating earnings of $0.74 per share, up 10%. Now focusing on year-over-year comparisons on an adjusted basis, total revenue declined 1%, reflecting both the challenging revenue environment and our…

Operator

Operator

As a reminder, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one related follow-up question. Our first question comes from Alex Blostein from Goldman Sachs. Alexander Blostein - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thanks. Good morning, everybody. So Todd, just picking up on the NII discussion, I think you answered part of that already in the prepared remarks with the hedging headwind, I guess, about 2 basis point incremental to what you reported. But just thinking through the puts and takes, where we are in the rate cycle besides the balance sheet, so how should we think about the rest of the year from an NII perspective assuming rates don't really change and again, the starting-off point on the NIM, I guess, would've been 2 basis points higher versus what you've reported, right? Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Yeah. That's correct, Alex. I would expect you'd see a couple of basis points higher on the NIM, and that would be reflective and a little bit higher NIR going forward. The balance sheet is relatively stable. It acted about as we had expected it would with the rate increase that we saw at the end of the fourth quarter, so client deposits were down a bit. So it looks to be very stable. We've adjusted further the negative interest rates with the move to (28:11) ECB and the euro. And the thing that's a bit of a headwind is with the flattening of the yield curve, the reinvestment rates are a little bit less than we would have liked. But net-net, the hedging should normalize, and we would expect to see a couple of basis points of expansion if rates don't change from here. Alexander Blostein - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Got it. Thanks.…

Operator

Operator

Taking our next question from Ashley Serrao with Credit Suisse. Ashley Neil Serrao - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Good morning. Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning. Ashley Neil Serrao - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Gerald, on asset management and investment management and the margin profile there, appreciate this quarter was tough macro wise, but hoping you can provide an update on how you feel the plan to drive margins higher there is going versus the goals outlined at Investor Day? I'll leave it at that. Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah, thanks, Ashley. We've said at Investor Day, and recently at our last annual meeting last week, we think we have some more work to do in improving the operating margins with the investment management area without sacrificing the investment strategies and without sacrificing, or actually adding to the strength of our portfolio managers. We think a lot of those costs can be dealt with at the center of investment management, and also trying to better rationalize or make more efficient our distribution costs. So we think there's opportunities to apply the same discipline to the rest of our businesses, to the running of the business of investment management and improve the ability for the boutiques to continue to drive their investment performance. So it is one of our goals and we're on track and we still have some work to do there. Ashley Neil Serrao - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Okay. And then, Todd, on deposit costs, I was curious how you're thinking about passing on the benefit from higher rates to clients? It looks like the deposit betas are fairly low so far, but how should we be thinking about the next 25 basis points of high (32:35) so it's sustainable? Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Yeah, Ashley. I would say that our deposit betas are probably a little lower than we had anticipated, so that's the good news. We would've expected that we would've recovered most of the first 25 basis points, which is the case, although there is some deposit attrition that I mentioned. And right now, as we forecast looking out, we are adjusting our betas slightly favorably. Ashley Neil Serrao - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Great. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the quarter. Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Betsy Graseck from Morgan Stanley. Elizabeth Lynn Graseck - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Hi. It's Betsy. Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Hi, Betsy. Elizabeth Lynn Graseck - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: A couple of questions. You mentioned early on in the conversation around blockchain and the question I have is, how are you in determining how to make those investments and what kind of timeframe to return on investments are you anticipating? I noticed that you remember both of R3 and also the Hyperledger Project, and I know there's dual tracks in many cases on competing asset classes. So, I'm just trying to understand how you are allocating your resources. Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Sure. No, you hit it right on. We are members of a variety of different consortiums and so we're participating in helping set the standards for the industry. I think that is one of the keys to the success of blockchain technology is standardization of the processes. We're also looking at it in our payments area and our corporate trust area and our broker dealer clearance business, particularly applied to repos. We think blockchain can be transformative. We also can see it as being an ability to increase the resiliency of our capabilities. I think it's going to take time to fully materialize, and it does require, in all cases, a trusted counterparty. And we think that's one of the roles that we can play, which is what we play today, the trusted counter party that everyone can show up on both sides of the ledger and trust that it will be executed well, and we plan to play a role in the middle of that. So we are…

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Brian Bedell of Deutsche Bank.

Brian B. Bedell - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Hi. Good morning, folks. Hey, maybe just, Todd, on the expense outlook. Good clarity on the second quarter and excellent expense control, of course, in the first quarter. But as we look out through the rest of the year, it looks like you'd be on track to reduce expenses at least another 2% or potentially more. I know they're seasonally high expenses you moved into the back end of the year. But maybe if you could just give us some color on what you're seeing for project spend coming into the back half of the year and whether you think you can do another 2% down on expenses this year? Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Yeah. I think we're a little ahead of where we had expected to be, frankly, Brian. We did see – I just want to remind you, in the first quarter, we do tend to see seasonal lower legal expense, also a little bit seasonally lower business development and consulting. And the other thing we saw is revenues were down in our higher comps business lines. So as the market moves, we would expect revenues to pick up in those lines and the associated expenses with them. We do think that around both the resolution plan, we're going to have to accelerate some of the investments that we intended to make. We had committed last year to invest $140 million over the next 18 months or so in order to build resilience and improve the probability of success in our plan. We may have to accelerate that a bit. So there are some headwinds we're facing, but I think we've got some – we're basing it off of a lower base than we would've expected to be at this time, so we're probably a little ahead of the guidance that we had previously given.

Brian B. Bedell - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Okay, great. And thanks for that. And then maybe either for Brian or Joe, I guess if you can talk about the dynamics in clearing, we have the previously announced client loss versus the impact of the money market fee waivers and client wins. And then maybe, Brian, if you want to comment a little bit about development of NEXEN in terms of the investment outlook for this year and how you're seeing -which stage of development you're in, in terms of bringing on new clients and that and whether you think there's a revenue generation component coming either this year or next year? Brian Thomas Shea - Vice Chairman & CEO-Investment Services: Sure. Happy to. It's Brian Shea. Clearing services actually is suffering a bit from the loss of those clients that we talked about and shared with you in advance, but we're benefiting from the reduction in fee waivers driven by the December rate increase. So that's offset with, really, the loss of the client business in the short term. And we've also benefited from taking on a number of clients in the third and fourth quarters as a result of J.P. Morgan's exit. And we continue to see interest from self-clearing firms who are looking to outsource and we converted another self-clearing firm in the first quarter. So overall, the clearing services picture is solid. And they're executing very strong expense discipline so we think we'll have modest year-over-year growth from clearing services. The other dynamic in clearing services is that the RIA custody business is growing and the DOL judiciary standard is likely to help accelerate that growth over time. So we feel good about our position there and the leverage of the private banking services of our wealth management group into that RIA and broker dealer market is also a very positive long-term development for clearing services. Turning to the NEXEN question, NEXEN is no longer an idea or a vision, it's really a reality. It's in production. And we now have 3,600 client users across 950 clients, exercising and using NEXEN in production every day. It cuts across now AIS clients, asset servicing clients, broker dealer services, liquidity, direct and corporate trust, as Gerald mentioned. And we expect to have more functionality, more capabilities, more APIs, more third party FIN tech applications embedded in the platform over time, and we expect to roll this out to our entire client base over time. So we're getting real momentum and take-up, and the reaction from the clients is actually quite positive. The client experience is just better.

Brian B. Bedell - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Analyst

Great. And so the revenue expense dynamic in terms of – it sounds like you're through a lot of the investment phase and now you're closer to realizing potential revenue gains from this? Brian Thomas Shea - Vice Chairman & CEO-Investment Services: Yeah. I guess the way I'd say it is, as part of the business of improvement process we're actually self-funding the development of NEXEN, so we continue (41:28). As we insource technology developers and we simplify our infrastructure, we are able to shift technology investment firm redundant, lights on-type investment to strategic investments. So that's enabling us to fund NEXEN and other market-leading solutions for clients without actually increasing our technology investment or expense.

Operator

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Glenn Schorr with Evercore.

Glenn Schorr - Evercore Group LLC

Analyst · Evercore.

Hi, there. Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Good morning.

Glenn Schorr - Evercore Group LLC

Analyst · Evercore.

A question about – Good morning. About some of the balance sheet remixing. Some of this just happened, some of it's purposeful. But security is down 4% year-on-year, loans up 6%. I noticed the 23% growth on the investment management loans, so curious what those are and if that's what the big driver is, driving the 21, 22 basis point jump in average loan yields year-on-year? Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Sure, Glenn. One of the strategies we've had is to growth the wealth management business, and so that's where the loans are booked. So those are either margin-style loans or mortgages to high net worth individuals. And we have had some meaningful success in expanding that mortgage portfolio. Most of those are jumbo mortgages arms, some of them would be floating, and that has helped drive the mix that you talked about and that's been planned. Another area of loan growth that we've enjoyed is in our secured financing transactions. I would expect the rate of that growth to flow somewhat from what we've been doing to date. And the mix now, I think, will be more stable as we look out the next 12 months or so.

Glenn Schorr - Evercore Group LLC

Analyst · Evercore.

Got it. Okay. That's perfect. And then I know the jump up really happened last quarter but I'm looking at the year-on-year increase in non-performing loans and the decrease in the allowance, and I know it was stable quarter-on-quarter. So I guess the real question is just a quick comment on what you see credit-wise for your mix. Hidden within there is an energy question, but really, just overall credit. Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. Glenn, that was just one loan that had to do with the Sentinel reversal of a court decision, and that became a non-performing loan. We took the provision against it to market to the current value, so that's done. The rest of the portfolio is absolutely stable.

Glenn Schorr - Evercore Group LLC

Analyst · Evercore.

And right coverage ratio? Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yes.

Glenn Schorr - Evercore Group LLC

Analyst · Evercore.

Okay. Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: You did see us increase our provision in the first quarter to $10 million, but the credit portfolio continues to be strong. We do have some exposure to energy, which we explained on the call in the last quarter. And there will be some migration even though that is almost entirely investment grade. There is some modest migration and we would expect some provision associated with that portfolio but we don't expect it to be material.

Glenn Schorr - Evercore Group LLC

Analyst · Evercore.

Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Ken Usdin with Jefferies.

Ken Usdin - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Thanks. Good morning. Can you give us a little more color? You've mentioned that on the fee waiver side you got about 50% back and the next hike won't be as incremental. But Todd, maybe you can just help us understand given that there are some of the expenses that come back in, what's the current existing drag still on a per share basis that you got from fee waivers, and how many more hikes would it take to get the rest of it back? Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Yeah. We had indicated that we thought there was about a $0.06 to $0.08 drag to EPS driven by fee waivers, and so we're getting about 50% of that back so, we got about $3.50 in these numbers relative to the fee waivers is our best estimate. That's probably a little bit better than we had anticipated. We did expect it not to be exactly linear. The first move is the best one, the second move will be not quite as great. But having had the experience of this, I would expect we would cover a little better than our previous guidance of 70% with a 50 basis point move. And I expect 100 point basis point move would cover all of it.

Ken Usdin - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Okay, great. The second question just on the core (45:58) asset servicing business. After a really great run of big, big business wins, the last couple of quarters have been decent but in kind of the $50 billion-ish range, can you talk about the pipeline for just core wins and your outlook for growth in that segment of the servicing business? Brian Thomas Shea - Vice Chairman & CEO-Investment Services: Yeah, this is Brian Shea. The new business signed number can vary reasonably significantly quarter to quarter, and we've had a couple of soft quarters. I would say it reflects a couple of things. Our focus on profitable client relationships over sort of just pure revenue and market share, we're being extremely disciplined and selective about the new business assignments we take on. And that's actually part of the reason you're seeing improved operating margins and you're seeing our fee to expense ratio improve significantly. But in terms of the pipeline, the pipeline remains actually pretty strong. It's up significantly on a sequential basis. And we still believe that this is a strong growth driver for the company going forward. The secular trend towards asset managers wanting to outsource and refocus their energy on the investment process itself we think is continuing, and that's why we have invested in things like the real estate and private equity administration business. This, in 2016, after lifting out the Deutsche Bank team and serving Deutsche Bank will now be starting to take on third party clients. And in addition, we have a strong pipeline of middle-office services from asset managers and demand for the Eagle technology platform. So we still believe that we can drive long-term growth and we're confident in that.

Ken Usdin - Jefferies LLC

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Mike Mayo with CLSA.

Mike Mayo - CLSA Americas LLC

Analyst

Hi. So in aggregate, expenses are down, the pre-tax margin's up from 30% to 31. So in aggregate, that's moving in the right direction, but when I look at the investment management adjusted pre-tax operating margin of 30%, I'm not sure the last time it was that low, at least going back several years. And so I'll ask the same question that I asked at last week's annual meeting and that is, under what scenario would you consider more aggressive dispositions a part of your asset management business? And along the lines of that question, I guess at the meeting you now have a new lead director, after the meeting and so what's his role, what's your interaction with him in the first week and what do you expect that role to be? Do you talk to him about things like hey, maybe the investment management business should be restructured more aggressively to help improve what's a margin way below peer? Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. A lot of questions in there, Mike. But I always appreciate them. First of all, we have a lot of confidence in our investment management business. It's been a tough quarter and we saw a lot of outflows not only in our firm but across the industry last year. 2015 was probably one of the biggest outflow years in traditional active equity. And as you know, that's one of the highest fee realization products across the industry. We feel better that the active equity flows have stemmed the tide. We saw some outflows in index, but our LDI strategy, our alternative strategy continues to pick up and so we ended up with positive, net long-term flows for this quarter which I think fairs pretty well against our competitors. We…

Mike Mayo - CLSA Americas LLC

Analyst

And then as a short follow up, earlier you said you might reduce distribution costs to help out investment management. Could you elaborate on that, or any other details on where you see the greatest potential? Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. What I referred to was making sure we're getting the bang for our buck for our distribution expense and make sure it's targeted in the right places where we're getting good results. And so maybe, Mitchell, you want to comment on a little bit.

Mitchell Evan Harris - Chief Executive Officer-Investment Management

Analyst

Thank you. What I'd like to actually comment on is if you really look at our core business, Mike, it's actually pretty strong and moving up. The other revenue line is what's confusing things a little bit, and I think you have to keep in mind the first quarter of last year was very strong, especially on the seed capital front. And even when you look at our – and it wasn't as strong, obviously, in this quarter. You also have the issue of internal payments that we've given to investment services on fee waiver abatements that's in that line; that stays within the company. So it's not really a weakness, per se, and as Gerald did mention, investment performance has been good; flows are abating. The first two months were weak. The – March was actually much better, and we're getting it in the right category. So you only had $3 billion down in equities, which was, on average, it was $8 billion down per quarter last year. Alternatives are still improving. Our initiatives in terms of the retail – which was mentioned earlier – distribution, we had 300 million in positive flows. We were the eighth best performing retail out of 30. So I think our distribution is improving. Our performance is improving. The money market fee waivers help all of us. Flows are becoming less negative. And on the expense management side, we are looking at where there's overlaps between the boutiques, between the IM center and we will cuts those out. So I think we're going to continue to drive both expenses down. And I think there are significant revenue opportunities going into the year. Brian Thomas Shea - Vice Chairman & CEO-Investment Services: And we've taken a hard look at the corporate overheads and those are coming down related to investment management as well. So I think there's opportunity...

Mike Mayo - CLSA Americas LLC

Analyst

Thank you. Brian Thomas Shea - Vice Chairman & CEO-Investment Services: ...Opportunity for both scale as well as other actions we can take. Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Mike.

Mike Mayo - CLSA Americas LLC

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Brennan Hawken with UBS.

Brennan McHugh Hawken - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. First, nice tip of the cap to Hamilton in your deck, by the way, on the back of the $10 bill brouhaha. Good to see that. Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank you. Thank you. Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Yes. We had a lot of emotional attachment to that one, and we're very, very pleased with the Secretary of Treasury's decision there.

Brennan McHugh Hawken - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS.

No doubt. So on expenses, can you quantify – I don't think, Todd, you did in your prepared remarks, how much was severance in comp this quarter and maybe how would that compare to last year and the fourth quarter? Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Yeah, I think if you – there's a couple of things; one is when we finalize our actual incentive payouts, oftentimes there is either adjustment one-way or the other. That adjustment was favorable and it actually approximately offset the severance. So, on a year-over-year basis, the net of that was basically zero. I think a way to look at our expenses on a year-over-year basis and the staff expense, I'll give it to you very specifically, the acceleration was $9 million higher. And last year we had a pension curtailment when we curtailed our defined benefit plan, and that was a $30 million benefit. So we had a $39 million headwind, if you will, going into this year's first quarter from those two events. Plenty of that was offset with, effectively, the benefit of curtailing the pension last year. So it wasn't frozen. We took the gain when we announced it, but it wasn't actually frozen until the third quarter, so we got the benefit of that. So there's about a $20 million headwind on a year-over-year basis from those various categories.

Brennan McHugh Hawken - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS.

Great. Thanks for walking me through that, Todd. And then issuer services, you guys called out depository receipt business and the strength there. Given the continued rally in the EM, should we assume that that's sustainable and is that still a reasonably good indicator for that business? Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Yeah. Yes, DRs is – definitely tied to emerging market activity in issuance. And so a pickup in emerging market issuance will be helpful to DRs for sure. The other driver there is corporate actions tend to be helpful, so if you have a pickup in banking activity or merger activity, that tends to be a positive driver for DRs as well. On the corporate trust side of issuer, we've signaled that the fee decline we experienced for the prior few years would moderate and level off, which it has done. They're benefiting now from the restoration of some of the fee waivers, and while bond issuance was down pretty significantly industry wide in the first quarter, our market share in corporate trust is picking up. And we think that'll be one of the drivers of growth in the future for investment services.

Brennan McHugh Hawken - UBS Securities LLC

Analyst · UBS.

Great. Thanks for the color. Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Adam Beatty from Bank of America-Merrill Lynch.

Adam Q. Beatty - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Thank you, and good morning. Question on asset management, particularly the positive U.S. retail flows. You mentioned multi-strat and alternatives. Is that what's driving the positive flows, or are there other products that are working? Thanks.

Mitchell Evan Harris - Chief Executive Officer-Investment Management

Analyst

Well, this is Mitchell. You have LDI that you had $14 billion of positive flows, so that's contributed to it. And fixed is flat, but – meaning core fix, but it's primarily on LDI and on alternatives.

Adam Q. Beatty - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Thank you. And then maybe a broader question about the outlook for wealth management, particularly the retirement business. As the retiree population grows, are you seeing – I mean LDI has been strong on kind of the institutional side. On the retail wealth management side, are you seeing people do a similar kind of individual LDI where they're moving to fixed income and trying to immunize their savings? Or given some shortfalls in people's retirement savings, are they kind of going more towards equity and swinging for the fences in terms of building capital? Which trend is more dominant in your wealth management business?

Mitchell Evan Harris - Chief Executive Officer-Investment Management

Analyst

They're definitely not swinging for the fences. It's more of a balance. People are confused. Most people don't have enough; the wealth obviously do. But they're looking for solutions in this market. Are interest rates going up? What's going to happen to fixed income? The equity markets have been very volatile, so they're looking at a more conservative balance type of approach, quite frankly. So equities remained a significant element but probably has come down a little bit, and they're looking more at corporate credit, munis have performed well and had to balance out their fixed income portfolios.

Adam Q. Beatty - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Very helpful. Thanks, Mitch.

Mitchell Evan Harris - Chief Executive Officer-Investment Management

Analyst

Yep.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Geoffrey Elliott with Autonomous Research.

Geoffrey Elliott - Autonomous Research LLP

Analyst · Autonomous Research.

Hello. Good morning. Thank you for taking the question. Very interested to hear you highlighting blockchain technology so much. How do you think about the possibility that all of this innovation kind of removed some of your technological modes and ultimately reduces the pool of revenues that could be available to the whole trust of custody industry? Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: We actually see ourselves as one of the major participants in using the technology to improve the efficiency of our operations and the resiliency of our operations. And as I said earlier, the fact that no matter what technology is used, a trusted counterparty intermediary is required, we see ourselves playing in that role. So, while certain efficiencies and certain revenues may lessen the revenues, we think we're going to pick up that in the cost side as the technology gets improved and rolled out. So, we see ourselves as being a critical player in the middle of this. As I said, we have pilot programs going on in the payments business, in corporate trust and our broker-dealer business, and particularly around repos. So, we're watching it carefully. We're participating actively. It's really hard to tell exactly how it's going to roll out, but we do see ourselves as being a major participant in it. Brian Thomas Shea - Vice Chairman & CEO-Investment Services: Yeah, this is Brian – sorry.

Geoffrey Elliott - Autonomous Research LLP

Analyst · Autonomous Research.

Just go ahead. Brian Thomas Shea - Vice Chairman & CEO-Investment Services: I would just add that we're executing a NEXEN ecosystem strategy, which includes an app store. And part of the reason for being immersed in this FinTech world is to find solutions that can really add value to clients. And clients are obviously interested in getting the value with the new applications and innovative technology, but they frankly, in many cases, do not want to integrate it, do not want to do the work of managing that. And so, our ecosystem will be enable us to embed third-party solutions in a much more easy streamlined way, which will reduce the client's under management cost. So, we think NEXEN enables us to leverage these companies and these innovative solutions, and it also enables us to actually help drive revenue growth and more value for clients. And we're – another example would be on NEXEN, we have a digital pulse big data solution in. We've invented client optimization technology, securities lending optimization technology, liquidity management optimization technology, all of which are sources of improving our clients' profitability and sources of revenue for the company in the future. So, there's real opportunity here, as well as some risk, and we're immersing ourselves to try to make sure that the opportunities outweigh the risks.

Geoffrey Elliott - Autonomous Research LLP

Analyst · Autonomous Research.

Great. And just a very quick numbers question. The expenses, what would the year-on-year change have been on a constant-currency basis? Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: It's about 100 basis-point benefit. So, it would've been about 100 basis points more, rather down three, they would have been down two.

Geoffrey Elliott - Autonomous Research LLP

Analyst · Autonomous Research.

Perfect. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker

Analyst · Autonomous Research.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And our next question is from Brian Kleinhanzl with KBW. Brian Kleinhanzl - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Great. Thanks. I just had a quick question on the balance sheet. I know you gave kind of guidance as to what the margin would do if rates were flat over 2016, but if we do get another rate increase in 2016, would you expect a similar drop in deposits like you saw this quarter, or are you expecting stability kind of over the deposit base as rates increase from here? Thanks. Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Yeah. No, we expect that there will be further run off with additional rate increases. We think that, that deposit runoff, that attrition is probably a little bit less than we had previously guided. So we – back in our Investor Day, we had guided that with normalization of rates, let's say that's 100 basis points or so, we would've expected to see about $40 billion to $70 billion of runoff. I think we will see something to the lower end of that. So we've seen in the first $25 billion, we've seen about $13 billion or so. So, I think we would stick with that guidance. We do think the margin expansion will more than offset any loss of deposits, which will lead to higher NIR in a rising-rate environment. And when we model that and report that in our financials, we are reflecting the runoff that comes – our estimated runoff that comes with the movement in interest rates. Brian Kleinhanzl - Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.: Great. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

And our final question will come from Gerard Cassidy with RBC.

Gerard Cassidy - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Thank you. I apologize if you addressed these questions, I had to jump on and off your call. But Gerald, can you share with us – there's a lot of disruption going on in the capital markets and many of the European and UK capital market players have downsized and are exited specific businesses in the capital markets such as FIC trading or equity trading. Are you guys seeing any opportunities to gain market share in your business lines in those markets due to the disruption that some of those companies are going through? Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, the companies that are going through that are in, many cases, some of our largest clients, so some of their reduced activity is part of the challenges that we're trying to overcome in terms of the market activity. That being said, we are seeing some of the shift in that activity to smaller firms who also happen to be more rapidly growing clients, and we do see ourselves being able to provide, extend our service model to some of those firms who are picking up some of the trading flack or need the collateral services that I talked about earlier. We do have what we refer to as prime custody, prime services solutions, so some of the activity we see ourselves being able to pick up on a direct basis without taking on the risks associated with normal prime brokerage activity. So, we try to do it in a conservative thoughtful way, but we do see ourselves being able to expand a little bit more in that space. Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: But I would add to that, Gerard, we're not interested in becoming a large, fixed income trading operation. Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah, absolutely. Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: So, that's not what we're looking for. We do make markets for some of our clients, for Pershing clients and so forth, but it's a relatively modest accommodation business for us and we don't expect that to change.

Gerard Cassidy - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Great. And then as a follow-up on CCAR, obviously this year we had the negative interest rate environment and I think most banks probably quantitatively will come out of it okay. But from a qualitative standpoint, from the systems stand point, are you guys comfortable with what you were able to submit to the regulators? I know many banks have addressed that their systems are going to be using manual overrides to handle that negative rate environment. Are you guys – is yours similar that or are you fully automated and you could do it without any manual overrides in negative rate environment here in the U.S.? Thomas P. Gibbons - Vice Chairman & Chief Financial Officer: Yeah, well, I think one of the benefits is we're mostly an institutional company, and so that we've had the experience of passing on negative interest rates through our systems in Europe and in a number of jurisdictions and now in Japan as well. So, we think that is something that we could operationally manage.

Gerard Cassidy - RBC Capital Markets LLC

Analyst

Great. I appreciate it. Thank you. Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Great. Gerald L. Hassell - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Well, thank you very much, everybody, for joining us this morning. Additional questions can be directed to Valerie Haertel and our Investor Relations team. And we look forward to engaging with you, and thank you very much for dialing in.

Operator

Operator

And if there are any additional questions or comments, you may contact Ms. Valerie Haertel at 212-635-8529. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating.