Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And thank you for joining Cowen Group Incorporated Conference Call to discuss the Financial Results for the 2015 Third Quarter. By now, you should have received a copy of the company’s earnings release, which can be accessed at Cowen Group Incorporated’s website at www.cowen.com. Before we begin, the company has asked me to remind you that some of the comments made on today’s call and some of the responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties described in the company’s earnings release and other filings with the SEC. Cowen Group, Incorporated has no obligation to update the information presented on the call. A more complete description of these and other risks and uncertainties and assumptions is included in the company’s filings with the SEC, which are available on the company’s website and on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Also, on today’s call, our speakers will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which the company believes will provide useful information for the investors. Reconciliation of these measures to GAAP is consistent with the company’s reconciliation as presented in today’s earnings release. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Peter Cohen, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Please begin.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Cowen’s third quarter earnings call. With me today, among others is Jeff Solomon, President of Cowen Group; and Steve Lasota, our CFO. In the third quarter our core operating businesses performed very well, while investment income and incentive income adversely affected revenue and profitability in the quarter. As you can see on the waterfall charts attached to the press release -- in the earnings release and I will address this further in the call. Before turning the call over to Jeff to discuss the performance of Cowen and Company, I will discuss the results of Ramius and briefly comment on the performance we experienced on our investment portfolio. Ramius continues to attract and retain assets under management even in an environment where many investments have retrenched, each of our investment capabilities, alternative solutions, activism, loyalties credits, global macro loans for equity merger and events, managed futures and real estate are highly relevant in today’s investment climate. Our ability to continue winning best investment mandates over the years regardless of the market reflects that. Despite the challenging quarter, investment performance has been strong year-to-date on both an absolute basis and compared to relevant HFRI indices many of the funds we are currently marketing. In third quarter the hedge fund industry assets, based on industry data that has been published shrank about $95 billion, which was the largest loss of assets in the industry since 2008. In contrast, assets under management at Ramius expanded by more than $500 million with AUM reaching $13.7 billion as of October 1st. Of the total AUM increase in the quarter $1.2 billion was net subscriptions minus $684 million in performance. Our strategies were successful in raising assets during the quarter. Management fees grew 10% in the quarter as…

Thanks, Peter. We had a very good operating performance at Cowen and Company this past quarter. Investment banking demand for new issuance was positive at the beginning of the quarter, but we experienced a slowdown with the August and September market volatility as the number of IPOs and follow-ons coming to market declined considerably. Having said that, our Investment Banking division reported one of its strongest quarters in recent years and was surpassed only by the first and second quarter of this year. In equity capital markets are closed on 27 transactions which included six IPOs compared to 19 transactions and nine IPOs in the prior period. Our average fee across all our equity deals increased 84% year-over-year, reflecting our improved market position over the past few years. Given the concerns we have heard from a number of investors, I’d like to take a few minutes to discuss our thoughts in the current environment and the trends within the biotech sector. In a more volatile environment such as we are in today there are four things to consider, one, the capital needs of life sciences companies over the next few years, two, the way in which these companies will raise that money, three, the number of publicly-traded biotech companies that has increased, and four, Cowen’s transformation over the years. On the first point, life sciences companies are regular consumers of capital and the current market environment does not change the amount of capital required to fund their businesses. However, it may change the amount of capital these companies raise at any given point in time and the form in which they raise it. The drug discovery process still remains quite capital intensive, it takes hundreds of millions of dollars and many years to move to the preclinical and clinical trials…

Thank you, Jeff. In the third quarter of 2015, we reported a GAAP net loss attributable to common shareholders of $11.9 million or $0.11 per diluted common share, compared to GAAP net income attributable to common shareholders of $6.5 million or $0.05 per diluted common share in the prior year period. Diluted per share data is based upon 109 million weighted average shares outstanding. Third quarter GAAP net income attributable to common shareholders includes an income tax benefit of $5.1 million. As a reminder, with the release of our deferred tax valuation allowance in the fourth quarter of 2014, our nine-month GAAP results reflect an income tax expense. The tax benefit booked in the quarter is primarily attributable to a decrease in the company’s operating profit. However, given the size of our deferred tax assets we do not expect to be a cash tax payer for several years. Third quarter GAAP net income attributable to common shareholders also includes preferred stock dividends of $1.6 million, which is associated with the preferred stock issued in May. In addition to our GAAP results, management utilizes non-GAAP financial measures, what we term as economic income to analyze the core operating segment’s performance. We believe economic income provides more accurate view of the operating businesses. In general, economic income is a pretax measure that excludes the impact of accounting rules that require us to consolidate certain of our funds, certain other acquisition-related expenses, reorganization expenses and taxes, goodwill and intangible impairment, and preferred stock dividends. The remainder of my comments will be based on these non-GAAP financial measures. In the third quarter of 2015, the company reported an economic income loss of $14.5 million or $0.13 per diluted share. This compares to an economic income gain of $6.7 million or $0.06 per diluted share…

Thanks, Steve. Our job at Cowen is to build a business that is well-positioned for success around all market segments. Our core businesses reflected in our three revenues line investment banking and brokerage and management fees performed well in the quarter. As we continue to grow our business we are in a position to mitigate the effects of quarter-to-quarter variability associated with performance fees and investment income as it starts with driving our -- as it starts to driving our core business and creating platform synergies focused on revenue growth, expense management and capital management. 2011 was the year in which we did a lot of restructuring and 2012 was the year in which we began to establish a framework for our business today. As we look to the future, we see many opportunities to drive revenue and margins organically and through acquisition. Building a winning organization starts with putting the right team in place and the market opportunity is less than obvious. It’s followed by creating a culture where when someone wins we all win. Again, thank you to our colleagues for all their hard work over the years, and making a difference in Cowen to our clients and our shareholders. Now I’d like to open it up for questions. Operator?

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Devin Ryan with JMP. Your line is open.

Hey. Thanks. Good morning, everyone.

Hi, Devin.

Hi, Devin.

Hey. So on the balance sheet just want to make sure I understand the comments. So the risk was reduced during the quarter, so to the extent the markets has been recovering thus far in the fourth quarter, does that mean that the, I guess, recovery and results will be more muted or how should we think about higher position today given that the markets have been a little better in the fourth quarter?

Yeah. Well, Devin, this is Peter. The -- we saw it reducing our exposure in August. We kept it kind of muted in September and may be even early October, but when the market started to stabilize we started to sort of lift some of those protection mechanisms we put in. Our service performance has been excellent on the balance sheet and we don’t really think we’ve given up anything by the actions we took during third quarter.

I think it’s also worth noting, Devin, that a lot of the strategies that we have are spread strategy and those spreads can get wider and narrower. We are seeing tons of volatility we see spreads get wider and then when the markets gets a little less volatile those spreads come back in. so there is just a natural ebb and flow to those new reverting strategies. So when we see less market volatility those strategies start to generate income.

Yeah. I think that in the quarter with volatility that we all experienced, we saw was exacerbated by the lack of liquidity that there is in the marketplace in general and as we have all seen some of the best investors of our generation who have suffered terribly during the third quarter and coming from continuing even into October and what happens is they tend to go to where they have liquidity to basically rebalance its portfolio, a lot of what we do are in those more liquid names and like merger arb and we -- spreads today are like 2008 spreads and this is not a 2008 environment. Unless you’re on top of that with a political environment where a question about drug pricing by one particular candidate or a question about some of the big healthcare company mergers by one particular candidate put fear into the market and driven spreads out wider in transactions that are definitive contracts, subject to some regulatory review, but by and large they are going to happen. So we feel very comfortable, it’s not a really exact analogy, but if you go back to the summer of 2011, August 2011, we had the sovereign debt crisis volatility in the markets. As I recall, we had mark-to-market losses about $17 million or something in the quarter or third quarter, all of which was made back plus in the fourth quarter. We have what is over a 20-year history of investing our capital at a compounded rate of return of north of 15%. We’re not doing anything different today than we’ve been doing for the last 20 years and expect to continue to do it. And as we continue to invest and we’re not just speculating in any way shape or form on our balance sheet. What we’re doing is investing a strategies that we are trying to scale with client assets and as we put up performance like merger arb, our performance year-to-date is not good, it’s excellent, notwithstanding the quarter and it is why we are engaged in a number of dialogues that people love that strategy substantially. That’s where money goes, to build strategies and prove that we know how to invest the money. That has been our history since the day we opened the shop and it’s going to continue to be what we are all about. And maintaining liquidity so that when opportunities like Conifer or Concept come along, we’ve got the liquidity to go and make those acquisitions and scale the Cowen Company part of the business, so, I mean, it’s a little bit of an orchestra that has to be managed.

Got it. Thanks for all the detail there. On the equity underwriting backlog, it sounds like the actual backlog is very strong and laid out a compelling case around, I think, the biotech industry in terms of long-term capital raising? Clearly, I think near term it’s been more challenged, fourth quarter has started on a slow note here? So with respect to just thinking about maybe some of the near-term dynamics, are issuers ready but the market is skittish, buyers don’t want to participate or is it more a function of just issuers don’t like the new prices after valuations have taken something, just trying to understand the dynamic there a little bit around the backup in the backlog?

Sure. I would say, it’s a combination of both. I mean, I think, we’ve got more than enough companies we think are great companies that are likely to access the market at some point over the next three to six months. And many of them maybe waiting for the all clear signal so they can get better execution, a lot of them are funded, a lot of them we did private round of force, so they are not -- they don’t have to do something today if the market doesn’t participate. And then there are other things companies that really feel that having a public currency is a real strategic advantage and so we have taken a couple of companies public this quarter and we’ve gotten them public. They’ve gotten -- I think they have come cheaper than maybe wherever we expected them to come but they are public and they can execute on their business plan. There will be value inflection points that occur in the next three to six months, if they deliver on what the key milestones are that they’ve identified we expect them to perform accordingly. And so, I just think there is a -- any time you have a situation where there is an uncertainty in the marketplace, particularly around drug pricing, it just throws a big rock in the pond and everybody has to see where the waves settle out. And when that happens, people just wait. I do think, though, as I mentioned in the call, this is the natural need for these companies to continue to access the market and when we look at our backlog, it doesn’t happen in the fourth quarter, it will happen in the first quarter, if it doesn’t happen in the first quarter it will happen in the second quarter. There’s just so many really excellent companies that we are involved with where we have already been mandated and we will make the right choices for those clients based on market conditions.

Okay. Great. With respect to the prime brokerage platforms, just want make sure all that, I guess, dilution to tangible book value, that’s already occurred because of the deals closed in last quarter, I just want to confirm that? And then now that deals have closed, I don’t know if you guys can give us some better quantification around what you are anticipating in terms of contribution as we look out over the next year there, that would be helpful?

So, Devin, on the first point, only Concept closed in the third quarter. Conifer was the first day of the fourth quarter. So that’s not then reflected in goodwill and intangibles and Jeff, can answer the second part.

So, I think, we were pretty definitive in the comments we made earlier that we think we can achieve a $200 million run rate in equities revenue and you can ascribe a large chunk of that to the acquisition of those two businesses. I will say that we have our targeted numbers that we would like to be able to hit on an average daily basis, we have them already established. I am not going to disclose them today but I will tell you this. The numbers we have laid out for our average daily revenues in 2016, we have already hit those multiple times in October of 2015, so for one, we see no falloff in revenue since the acquisition and we’ve seen that the combination of those and the ability to cross-sell even within those platforms, is beginning to take hold and we’re just getting started at permissioning those accounts for our content. So early days are encouraging as we connect here on that, so feel very confident in our ability to hit the $200 million number.

Got it. Okay. Helpful. And then just last from me, any captive reinsurance deals expected this quarter or over the next several quarters?

We are working on something, Devin, it’s still too early to tell whether it’s going to close in the fourth quarter, I mean, we hope to, but not really sure yet.

Okay. That’s great. Just Conifer, the dilution intangible is that something less than $0.10, just want to get some framework on that?

We are still working through the numbers, but it should be less -- should be around that, maybe a little bit less than that.

All right. Great. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Steven Chubak with Nomura. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning.

Hi. How are you?

Hi. Good morning.

Good morning.

Doing well, thanks. So just a quick follow-up question, Jeff, relating to the $200 million revenue target in equities that you alluded to, I appreciate some of the detail that you had provided? But just wanted to get a better sense as to, in thinking about that walk from call it $140 to $150 to $200 million, how much of that is from some of the new initiatives on the prime side versus your expectation for organic growth and continued market share gains?

So, I think, a large chunk of that is from the acquisitions and from some of the new initiatives to on our emerging managers’ platform. I think if you look at what we have been able to do in terms of our focus accounts, what we call the focus 170 accounts. We continue to make progress there, that’s going to, as we’ve taken market share that’s going to sort of ebb and flow a little bit more with what the commission wallet on the street looks like. What we see is a tremendous opportunity to permission clients, let’s say 200 and below, and really work through those clients to figure out who of those accounts are the best accounts for Cowen and when we find those accounts, we’ve got a number of initiatives on Board to really work those hard, then you go deep with those accounts and you figure out who the winners are and you grow with them. So we know that there’s an element to the smaller accounts where there’s turnover and that’s just the nature of that business. So we should be extremely careful with how we permission and how we optimize those resources, but the reality is they are so underserved by the larger firms, especially if you get down to hedge funds that are below 500, of the 500 largest, they’re so underserved. And I like to say the paradox is we can give them a little bit of what we do and it means an awful lot to them. So we believe that not only can we capitalize on acquiring the revenues without any attrition, but we think we should be able to drive revenues on average with the best accounts as we progress over the next few years.

Yeah. Thanks for that detail, Jeff. And maybe just switching gears for a moment, looking at the alternative side of the business. One of the things that we’ve been hearing at least some of your investors highlight, is the fact that there are windfalls or sources of future incremental earnings upside that aren’t currently contemplated either in consensus numbers, just given the chunkiness of some of those gains? The healthcare loyalty partners, I know some of the stakes that you have in your funds and strategies are marked at cost? I was hoping you can give us an update as to what some of those future sources of potential windfall are and how we should be thinking about that going forward?

Steve, we don’t usually give too much future guidance on this, but we do know with healthcare loyalty partners that what we’ve been telling people is unlike other hedge fund products where we are booking incentive fees on a hedge fund basis, so the method one versus method two. In healthcare royalty partners you don’t book any incentive fees until all the money is returned to the investors plus a preferred return, which was Fund 1 is, we’re getting pretty close. So we should see incentive fees start to come through for healthcare loyalty partners and as you know, we are on Fund 3, which is really Fund 4, because there’s fund 1, an overflow fund, Fund 2 and Fund 3. So as those starts to come on, they should continue year-after-year. So that’s what we see and that’s what we have been talking about on that side. For Fund 1, we do have some indication, but it’s still too early to tell what the number will be and when it will actually come in. so, but that is clearly an income, a piece of income that we do expect.

Okay. And then just one final one for me, just thinking about the capital management priorities, given areas you see for future investment, at the same time your stock is trading at a pretty healthy discount to tangible book, if you guys could just speak to that prioritization as it stands today that would be really helpful?

Could you clarify a little bit exactly…

Well, in terms of your capital -- your share -- capital management priorities, whether it’s share repurchase versus using some of that excess to fund future growth initiatives?

It’s -- I don’t think we take it down to sort of a defined list of priorities. We’re looking at the environment everyday that we are in we’re looking at the opportunities on the investment side, looking at the opportunities to build investment products. We are looking at the opportunities to add other businesses. So it’s a fluid thing. We will always maintain an enormous amount of liquidity. And as you can see, our Board re-upped our repurchase authority yesterday. We were very active in the third quarter buying stock. We bought 3.6 million or 3.7 million shares of stock and we will continue to buy back stock as long as we maintain liquidity and have what we need to to grow the businesses and grow the assets under management.

So the math we are doing, just to give you some idea, is as we are engaging either new strategies or acquisitions, we are looking at the long-term impact in terms of being able to drive earnings versus the short-term benefit of buying back stock. So we know that when we buy back stock it’s accretive today, but it inhibits your ability down the road to maybe grow businesses you think long-term are sustainable. So there is a very mechanism that goes through, so when we do these new initiatives, we are looking at them through the lens of how we’re driving long-term shareholder value and that’s math that we go through on every one of these. So what are we doing, launching a new strategy at Ramius or we doing an acquisition at Cowen and Company, we’re always looking at it through the prism of where does that fit in terms of long-term earnings growth versus the short-term gain associated with accreting to book value and I think, certainly, as Peter mentioned, over the last quarter we have the capital flexibility to do both and we will be looking at how we deploy capital through that prism.

Yeah. And without naming names, there are some firms in our business who spend an enormous amount of their liquidity and capital in buying back stock and now find themselves in a position where their ability to sort of invest forward is hampered, maybe they’ve made that decision. They don’t want to invest. They just want to kind of liquidate their capital back to their shareholders. But we have a young organization and the industry is going through a lot of change. We are right in the middle of that change and we are going to be a huge beneficiary of wherever it’s going both on the asset management side and on the securities side. I have always said since day one, we are in this for the long-term. This is -- we are not short-term oriented in what we do here and it’s going to remain that way.

Yeah. Understood. Very helpful color. Thanks for taking my questions.

Thanks.

Thanks, Steven.

Thank you. And our next question is from Joel Jeffrey with KBW. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning, guys.

Hi, Joel.

Hi, Joel.

Good morning.

I know you are talking a little bit about the performance so far in the fourth quarter? But just wondering how that specifically could relate to any kind of rebound we see in the incentive fees or the investment income line, how quickly could that occur if things pick up quickly?

Well, all I can do, Joel, is point to last year, as an example and I am not saying, it’s what we expect to happen, it just is what happened last year, but half our investment income and incentive fees last year were earned in the fourth quarter.

Joel, when we look at these investments, they play out over a period of time. We look at the returns of, I don’t think it’s possible to manage to a daily performance number in the strategy that we are in or even maybe a quarterly number. But we do take great pride in the fact that the strategies we have over the long haul perform and sometimes they -- that performance comes in a very compressed timeframe and sometimes it plays out over time. And so, Peter is right, we had an unbelievable rally into the year end last year, not saying that we will have that again this year. But if we do, it’s a very direct correlation to performance and so it’s not like there’s a lag there.

Great. Thanks for taking the question.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you. I am not showing any further questions, I’ll now turn the call back over to management for closing remarks.

Well, thanks, everybody. I appreciate your taking the time, sorry, I know some of you have trouble dialing in, I apologize on behalf of Thomson Reuters to all of you who had trouble dialing into the call. We will certainly be available to answer questions and we will be in touch with a number of you over the course of the next few days and weeks. Thanks again for listening in.

And let me just further add that we want to thank everyone here at Cowen for their continuing efforts to help build this business. We’ve come a long way since the merger five years ago, six years ago and we couldn’t be more pleased with the progress we’ve made, notwithstanding, the volatility in the quarter. So to all of my colleagues here thank you very much.