Andrew S. Duff
Management
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Piper Jaffray Companies Conference Call. Before we begin -- this is Andrew Duff. Before we begin, our review of 2013 results, as you can see, we've incorporated certain non-GAAP elements in presenting our results. Our objective in enhancing our reporting is to provide you with more clarity on the performance of our business by excluding items, such as noncontrolling interest from our consolidated investment funds in certain acquisition-related costs. Deb will provide more details on this, as well as our financial results. Turning to our year. We had a very strong finish to 2013, with nearly all of our businesses up sequentially and year-over-year in the fourth quarter to deliver our best quarterly revenue since we went public in 2004. In general, we saw momentum build in our equities-related activities as the year progressed. The strong finish in our fixed income activities partially overcame challenging conditions we experienced in midyear. Our diverse mix of businesses combined to produce improved results over 2012 in all key metrics, including revenues, net income and most importantly, return on equity. For the year, we generated an ROE of 6.2%, an improvement over last year's 5.7% and a substantial improvement over 2011's ROE of 2.3% The comparison versus 2011 is important since it marked a key inflection point for us. In the midst of serious market dislocations in 2011, we embarked on a series of strategic steps with the overall objectives of producing meaningful improvements to our ROE over the near to mid-term and generating solid profits in any market environment. Also, we believe that as we executed successfully on our strategy, we would strengthen our position as an attractive platform for professionals and firms. We continued our substantial progress in achieving these objectives in 2013.…