From America, and I'm pleased to introduce Ali Dibadj. Ali is Chief Executive Officer and on the board of Janus Henderson, and prior to joining Janus, Ali was Chief Financial Officer AllianceBernstein. Ali, thank you for joining us.
Thanks, Craig. Thanks for having me.
Quick background on Janus. Janus is a global asset manager that expands across North America, Europe, Latin America, and Asia, servicing both the retail and institutional channels. Janus manages roughly $340 billion of AUM across active investment strategies, and last year Janus's net flows improved by $30 billion year-over-year, and maybe that's a sign of your magic touch, Ali. We'll start with the macro. 2024 is shaping up to be a year of inflections with falling interest rates and hopefully rising equity markets. What are your thoughts on this macro backdrop, and do you see this as a tailwind to Janus Henderson?
Yeah, great. Look, thanks for having me again, Craig. This is a great location, great venue, lots of great meetings with investors today, so appreciate that. I'm fairly bullish about the macro environment right now over the long term, and that comes from a person who's generally pessimistic, a classic value investor at heart, but you see enough signs that suggest that things over the long term should be quite positive. That being said, there has to be caveats around that, and I don't think everything that has been changing in the environment has filtered through people's valuations. For instance, the geopolitical changes that the world is going through right now, right or wrong, are clearly happening.
There's a shift in power around the world that has to be thought through when one invests in companies that have global supply chains or have to invest in emerging markets or what have you, like we do. I do think also the demographic shifts that are going on, not just the aging population, which has always been a theme for sure, but the slowing of growth and, in fact, the decline in population for the world over the next couple of decades has not transferred into people's terminal values in some sense either. Now, the biggest one, though, I would say is the increased cost of capital. The increased cost of capital has clearly not flowed through people's models across the industry. There's some pockets where I'd argue it's less flowed through, like in some of the private world, but certainly that's something that one has to contend with.
And that increased cost of capital, whether it be 5% or 4% or 3%, will not be zero as you go forward. So the next 10 years will not be the same as the past 10 years of investing where money was free. And what that really means is that there's really going to be an opportunity to select wheat from chaff or what we call haves or have-nots to create alpha on behalf of clients. And it's what all of you are trying to do at this meeting, at this conference, and other conferences. The good news is for Janus Henderson is that's what we do all day long. That's what we've done actually this year for 90 years as a firm.
We started off with one client that was very focused on research and separating wheat from chaff as things invested as they were investing, and now we do it for 60 million people directly or indirectly around the world. That's what we do with hundreds of people at our firm. 350 people at our firm are really focusing on figuring out where there would be alpha creation between picking a good company or a bad company or, in fact, shorting a good company or bad company. So macro very positive, but it's not in every pocket of the world. You will have discrepancies in performance between the haves and have-nots, and that's what we as Janus Henderson try to do for our clients.
Great. Let's move on to the fixed income reallocation potential. So we actually just went through a 3-year bond bear market, and 2022 was the worst year for bond flows ever. And now we also have record cash on the sidelines too via the money market fund industry. So when do you expect to see duration extensions accelerate, and do you think there could be sizable inflows into fixed income funds this year?
Yeah. So we agree with your thesis, having read some of your thoughtful notes on the return of re-risking in fixed income over the course of some period of time. We do believe that as rates start to bend downwards, you will see people come back and re-risk away from kind of "riskless." I put that between quotations because nothing's riskless, but "riskless" cash into areas of fixed income. I do think that's a real driver of what you're going to see over the next little while here. Really difficult for us to predict exactly when that happens. I would argue it hasn't really happened yet, at least not in a concerted fashion.
We've clearly seen some flows at Janus Henderson on the retail side of things, but I think the institutional side is still a little bit unclear about where they want to allocate some of their capital on the fixed income side. We have some people who are putting money in, but we've actually seen, for example, very recently for us, a pretty sizable outflow from fixed income that looked to de-risk things as opposed to re-risk things. So I think there's a little bit of a debate. The good news is for Janus Henderson, we feel very well positioned in the key strategies that we have in fixed income to benefit from that flow when the cuts are to happen.
We've seen in some parts of the world, most notably in some areas of Latin America, where the cuts in rates have happened, and you've actually seen a flow to us and certainly some of our peers.
Maybe it's not just cuts, it's the yield curve. If we could get the 10-year higher than Fed funds, do you think that's the trigger?
Look, right now it's clearly inverted, and it's very difficult for someone to give up on the short term for the long term. The thought process we have very much is we have a palette of things that we can offer clients, and we're seeing interest at different levels. So for example, if you are income seeking, we have the Multi-Asset Credit Fund and the Multi-Strategy Income Fund, which will give you more income. If you're interested in a more floating rate and a little bit lower risk profile, our ETF, securitized ETF platforms are quite exciting. Our JMBS, mortgage-backed securities, or AAA CLO franchise, JAAA, and others, Vanilla is another example, though. That's something that we can offer our clients as well. We have emerging market debt businesses. It's one that we bought in the past 18-19 months or so.
That's something that we brought on board where you can go out on the yield profile without taking undue risk because, again, the way our team thinks about it. And of course, we have some local businesses, like most notably our Australian fixed income franchise, which is quite attractive. Now, one thing that I think a little bit to your earlier question too, Craig, that might be interesting is we've had a lot of conversations with folks who are thinking about re-risking both in equities and in fixed income but don't necessarily want to go full bore on either. I would argue that there might be a dark horse here from a flow perspective, which is the good old Balanced Fund. Our Balanced Fund is extraordinarily high performing over many, many years.
We think that that could be a place that people want to take on more risk but have that balance on the equity side to have fixed income and have a little bit more octane than just having fixed income and having the equity side. And in each of those sleeves, equities and fixed income, what we do all day is separate wheat from chaff, invest in haves versus have-nots, both on the fixed income and the equity side, and then we combine those from a mixed perspective to be the right allocation for where we think the macro is going. So I couldn't imagine Balanced as being another one of the additions to Multi-Asset Credit, Multi-Sector Income, JAAA, JAAB. Some of our emerging market debt businesses are Asian or Australian fixed income in particular that could actually add to growth.
So we covered fixed income, and you just covered multi-asset. How about equities? What is the outlook for active equities, and could we see re-risking into equities too?
So I do think you will, and in fact, you're starting to see some of it. There is some form of re-risking that's happening. I mentioned the Balanced Fund, which I do think has some real legs here. By the way, that would be great for us. It's one of our biggest funds and has delivered great for clients over long periods of time. But I do think on pure equities there's a re-risking opportunity as well. Now, again, I think investors in particular, some of the conversations we've had recently with some of the most sophisticated sovereign wealth funds are realizing that the re-risking is there, but the tide will not lift all boats. There is a real cost of capital difference over the next 10 years or the next two, three years than there was in the past 10 years.
So really being able to select the right equities, the good ones from the bad ones, is something that they value much more greatly. Again, that's something that Janus Henderson does all day long. Think of our U.S. equities business, some of our storage businesses there, whether it be our Global Research Fund, whether it be our Contrarian Fund, whether it be our Small Cap Growth and Mid-Cap Growth or Small Cap Value Funds, Large Cap Growth. You go down the list of things. Technology, our Healthcare Franchise is more thematic in nature. They've delivered really great excess performance over longer periods of time, and so I can imagine investors getting in there as they re-risk.
But what we're seeing in particular, which is quite interesting, which would suggest a first step in this process is happening, is the most sophisticated sovereign wealth funds that I was mentioning a moment ago are actually moving away from passive. They're moving away from passive, and they're looking for things that can protect them on the downside, perhaps, or again, add a little bit more octane to it, combining a passive with an equity portfolio of things, whether it be thematic like healthcare and customized indices or other things. And that's something that we can bring to them with their solutions business, which is something we're ever investing in and ever growing. So short answer is we do see potential for re-risking. I think there's dipping the toes in the water that's happening already.
I do think that could go further down the line in balanced, and that could go even further down the line in equities in our pure equity platforms that we have. Our emerging market equity platform continues to grow as well as our European and APAC equities platform too.
Maybe the biggest net flow success story at Janus recently has been the active ETF business. You're number four in active ETFs globally now. What products are driving that?
Yeah. So it's a really interesting case study for us in looking at our strategy and putting it into execution mode. So remember, our strategy is to protect and grow our core businesses, amplify our strengths, and diversify where clients give us the right. This active fixed income ETFs was directly positioned at amplifying key strengths that we had. We had very clear strengths in securitized asset classes, things that we would sell to institutional partners in SMA form or other form as well. But what we found over and over again is that there was a real opportunity to democratize that very strong investment skill set to the retail channel, a retail channel that was hungry for securitized but said a different way, alternatives light in some sense, or certainly privates light in some sense. And so we took that very strong investment acumen.
We turned that into a form factor that was acceptable for a set of clients who, by the way, wanted to seed us and wanted to grow it. And then we developed a really strong platform around that. And so those would be the JAAA products, the JAAB products, so AAA CLOs and BBB CLOs, JMBS, which is a mortgage-backed securities product, Vanilla, which is more of a floating rate product plus cash or cash plus. We do think that that continues to offer us new opportunities. In fact, we just launched JSI last year, which is a broader securitized platform, again, combining some of those skill sets for the retail channel. We think that there's a lot of opportunity there in our active fixed income ETF franchise.
We think that it has proven that we can take a skill set and amplify it, train our sales force, bring them investment specialists, drive them to talk to RIAs and wirehouses, then now get into models. We think it's a really strong proof point, not just for the U.S. market and not just for fixed income, but perhaps beyond the U.S. market and certainly perhaps beyond fixed income as well for us to deliver on something that our clients actually want.
So when we take a step back on net flows, they came in much better in 2023 than the sell-side consensus was expecting. Some of that did come from large institutional wins. We know positive net flows are a very important metric for the investment community. When do you think we could get to a point where Janus is consistently generating positive net flows?
We're not there yet is the completely truthful, honest answer that I've said very publicly, but we're certainly on the way to get there. You're right. We went from negative $31 billion in net flows in 2022 to negative $0.7 billion in net flows in 2023, a very big reversal for the firm. And to be fair, better than I would have expected the firm delivered. What we're finding is that there are some elements of that growth that were not replenishable as quickly in 2024. So for example, you mentioned the institutional pipeline. That came in mostly in Q1 and a little bit in Q2. That was a pent-up demand for some of the skill sets that we had, as our clients were trying to figure out what type of business we were going to look like going forward.
They felt comfortable with that, and they funded those. But then we have to replenish that pipeline. We've talked publicly about 18-ish plus months to replenish that pipeline. So we're about a year from when that pipeline started to go away. I would hope to sometime during the course of this year seeing a little bit of a pipeline resurgence in the institutional pipeline. That doesn't mean they fund it this year, but certainly hopefully some improvements there. The leading indicators would certainly suggest that we're getting more meetings, more discussions with folks, but we are not seeing flows in that marketplace. In fact, we're seeing some of the same trends from an intermediary perspective in the U.S. That is still doing okay, but intermediary in U.K. and EMEA continues to be quite a challenge to our numbers.
So I guess summarizing in a different way, some of the trends we've seen in Q4, we expect to continue and are seeing continue in Q1 of this year, but the long-term trajectory is still positive. It won't change overnight. I can guarantee it won't change overnight. The long-term trends, particularly from a market share perspective and then growing, are clearly on the right path here.
Let's move on to strategy, business strategy. Really simply, how is your strategy today different than the prior leadership team?
So we were very focused on creating an easily articulatable strategy that had buy-in within the firm. So what we did is we brought together 40 people from around the firm, some people in this very room, and sat around and said, "Hey, let's talk about what we can do to improve clients' lives and what we, Janus Henderson, have the right to actually win in." And we asked those questions many, many times on the basis of a set of core beliefs about our industry. We were very transparent, almost had a negative bias, I guess, about the industry core beliefs.
We brought that forward to us and said, "If these are the core beliefs about the industry, what can we do to help clients and help our shareholders, i.e., help Janus Henderson?" We went through many iterations of that during weeks and months, and we came up with our strategy. The headlines of the strategy I just said a moment ago, we said quite publicly, "Protect and grow our core businesses, amplify our strengths, and diversify where clients give us the right." The beauty of that is under each of those, we have initiatives that we're executing on. Now, I'll talk about execution in a second, but I said articulatable, right? So if that's the right word, people can articulate it within the firm. Number two, bought in.
Those 40 people, the senior people in our firm, bought into the strategy, locked arms in the strategy, and everybody was believing in this. This is not a top-down view that I came in or somebody else came in, the board came in and said, "Look, this is what you have to do. This is something we created together, and that's a very important element of strategy." Strategy is worth the PowerPoint that's printed on or put on the screen on unless you actually start executing and there's buy-in. Clearly, there's buy-in throughout the firm, and it starts from those 40 people throughout the organization. Then from an execution perspective, we have teams against each of those initiatives throughout the firm, and we are watching and measuring like hawks. We are course-correcting. We're putting fuel to the fire. We have update meetings extraordinarily regularly about these things.
We present to the board on each of the initiatives to protect and grow, amplify, and diversify. So we're watching these extraordinarily carefully to make sure we're on track. We're adjusting. We're adding, etc. So there used to be history at our firm, maybe to answer a little bit of your question that I don't want to hit head-on, of lack of accountability and urgency. There ain't nowhere to hide. There is accountability, and there's urgency in this organization almost everywhere at this point. And that's being manifested through how we're delivering on our strategy. And you're clearly seeing green shoots and signs of success, whether it be U.S. intermediary, whether we're seeing early signs from an institutional perspective, whether it be solutions, whether it be what you're seeing in the Asia world for us, etc., etc., etc.
Now, the last couple of elements that I'd say, one other thing that we did is we developed our mission, value, and purpose. It's great to have a strategy. It's great to have urgency. It's great to have scorecards, etc., that kind of is the push element to it. But we wanted the pull element as well. So the mission, value, purpose is what we developed too. Similar thought process. That was not brought down from on high. That was crowdsourced. We surveyed 2,000 people, everybody in the firm. We did focus groups. We did interviews. They told us the words. They brought together what our purpose is and our five values, one of which, by the way, of the values is execution, supervision, intention. See point one of this paragraph, right? Our purpose is very easy to describe. Everybody knows it in the firm.
It's investing in a brighter future together. It goes to our core. We're investors, investing. We do together with our clients and internally. So we're investing together to deliver brighter futures. That's what gets us up in the morning, and that's what we do. Now, all of that, developing the strategy, getting buy-in, tracking it, making sure there's a mission, value, purpose associated to it, so everybody's rowing in the same direction, communicating that internally and now more and more externally, has to be put on top of a base of being able to invest back in the business. So we've been very diligent and disciplined on our costs. We're changing our whole complexion of our cost structure.
We're reducing costs that are internally focused and turning into costs that are focused on resources that help clients' lives, whether that be investing in our investors, whether that be investing in our technology to touch clients, whether that be investing in our client service, people, and actual broad services. So look, for lack of anything else, it's been very well thought through. And again, knock on wood, we're seeing some pretty good progress so far.
On the strategy front, how can you help your active equity business fight against some of those long-term headwinds from passive products? Do you have any view on when those headwinds may go away?
Yeah. So to the last part of your question, I do think as people start filtering through the re-risking that we were talking about before, I do think that you'll see more and more people go to active equities. Yes, there'll be some passive for sure on the equity side, but active equities as well. And it goes back a little bit to this cost of capital perspective. Let me just kind of emphasize this again because I think it's really important. The past 10 years, there was no cost of capital. We all know friends who worked at companies that probably shouldn't have survived but got significant capital at very, very low cost to make payroll, to continue the company. But it was a not good company to work at, right?
There was no lick of difference if you chose a good company versus a bad company over the past 10 years because money was free, and there was no alpha creation. That is not the world we're living in today. That is not the world we're going to be living in, even if rates drop by 100 basis points or 200 basis points. That's not the case. There is going to be cost of capital. And so separating that wheat from the chaff, separating the good companies from the bad companies will create alpha, even more so if you can short those bad companies. And that's when active equities becomes much more interesting for folks. And again, we have a phenomenal U.S. equities franchise. We have an outstanding EMEA and APAC equities franchise. Just look at our performance across the board.
It is stellar in so many ways for such a long period of time. Our best ideas research fund, for example, Global Research Fund, is doing extraordinarily well. You just look down the list, European equities, our global small and mid-cap equities, etc. It's very, very strong performance. So again, in a world where you have to separate wheat from chaff, we believe that there's a real opportunity for a firm like Janus Henderson to take a lot of those flows. Now, the industry is still going to be likely in negative flows, right? Although it might be moving a little bit from a headwind to less of a headwind, our focus is very much, because equity is such a big part of the business and we've got to get it right, is to drive market share.
And again, proof points, as we were talking before, you're seeing our market share in the equities business in the U.S. and to a certain extent in Europe as well even, which is a little bit behind the curve in terms of improvement, continue to improve market share, right? We're not losing market share anymore in U.S. equities. We were for many, many years. We hope to gain share, but at least the first kind of stop on the train is to not lose market share. And we're not losing that because the performance is strong, our client service is strong, and clients appreciate that in a world, again, where there is a cost of capital, which means alpha creation between haves and have-not companies.
We've seen your blended fee rate look fairly stable for a while. Yet if you look at the current flow composition, it's into ETFs. It's into fixed income, to lower fee products. If that continues, wouldn't we see the blended fee rate decline from here?
So we're going to manage that process as best as we can. We are certainly not immune from the challenges that other firms are feeling in the asset management world. But I'd say a couple of things. Number one, we are not feeling. I have to be careful, but we are not feeling what seems like pressures that other asset management companies are feeling in terms of like-for-like declines in fee rate. I'd like to think that's because we provide great client service and great performance, but we're not seeing that. I need something to be on sale if I want to continue to do business with you. We're not seeing that. I know some of our peers have complained about that stuff. Second thing is we do see the mix element for sure from a fee rate perspective.
So exactly to your point, you are seeing some of the lower fee rate areas, institutional, in fact, fixed income, active fixed income ETFs bring down where the flows are coming in from, from a rate perspective. There's no question about that. Look, part of our job is to manage that. What I will say, though, is that the fee rate on our active fixed income ETFs, for example, is not a 2, 3, 4 basis point ETF type business, right? It's active. It's a very difficult to replicate investment skill set. And so you're talking about kind of low 20s, 22 basis points type fees. Yes, granted, less than our high 40s kind of basis points on average, but the mix element is less impactful than if you're talking about a kind of pure commoditized ETF.
Now, that is massively overwhelmed, though, the last point on this, massively overwhelmed by channel shift. So if we grow our European intermediary business, right, that has huge upward momentum in our fee rate because the fee rate's just higher in that market. If we were to see our institutional business not grow a pipeline, that has a positive element to the fee rate. I still want to grow the business, but there's a positive element to the fee rate. So we're going to have to balance all of that. I can't promise that every quarter it's going up and not down, right? You get a big mandate that comes in that's a low fee mandate like we had last year. We were telegraphing that quite a bit. That's going to impact us.
But we're going to be certainly more protected than our peers given the construct of our business and given the way we're growing from things that are not as harsh on the fee rate dilution than others are feeling.
Let's move on to capital management. So you've really strengthened the balance sheet during your tenure at Janus Henderson. How do you evaluate the deployment of excess capital?
Yeah. So actually, I have to give credit to peers before me. The balance sheet that I walked into was an extraordinarily strong fortress balance sheet. We've strengthened it a little bit through delivering better numbers, but it was already very, very good. In that context, our capital usage thought process has not changed. First and foremost, we want to make sure that we have the right level of capital for regulatory requirements, for working capital, trading levels, etc. So that's something that we have to have without a doubt, and that's something that is number one priority. Now, we have a lot in excess of that, which is good news. So we have some options. The second thing that we want to do is invest back in the business organically and inorganically.
So inorganically, obviously, is around M&A, whether it be team liftouts or acquisitions or things like that. But we also have organic ways to invest back in the business. For example, our seed capital. We have a significant amount of seed capital, probably a little bit higher proportionally than our peers. And that has led to things like active fixed income ETFs or emerging market debt franchise growth or emerging market equities or other areas that we can seed things and grow. And I'd expect to see more of that as we've really relooked at how we seed and grow products to deliver on our clients' needs. The other way we can invest as well is from a technology perspective. So we've talked about cost discipline. I think that's a real opportunity to invest in technology.
That might be a short-term investment, but over time to improve our margins, to become more automated, to become more efficient and more consolidated from a technology perspective. So that's investing back in the business. What's left from that, we think it's our duty to give back to shareholders, right? We believe that even in this industry, even if it grows extraordinarily well, this is not a high-flying tech industry where you're growing 30%. It's an industry where you can certainly deliver a lot of cash, and returning that to shareholders is a way we absolutely think about doing it. We do that two ways. One is share buybacks now. We didn't do that for a little bit, but now share buybacks and dividends. We'd like to think that what we did last year is a good sign. We returned $321 million of cash to shareholders.
That's kind of high single digit of our market cap to shareholders. And if you think about it just from a share count perspective, since 2018, we've reduced our share count by 18.5%. We think that's the right thing to do on behalf of our shareholders. When we have excess capital to put in play, we'll return it to you all.
Let's focus on the M&A part of that response. How is the new M&A effort, the new strategy, different than the old strategy? And then in terms of targets, what are the qualities of the targets that you're evaluating?
Yeah. So our strategy on M&A is very clear. Again, we are going to be client-led in the way we buy things. So purchasing asset managers or other things that only are there to improve our margins is not going to be the top priority for us because that doesn't impact clients. Purchasing things that actually give us a broader palette of skill sets that we can then deliver to our clients, right, is absolutely the path that we want to go down, and that's the path we have been on. We haven't done as much M&A as I would like. We can certainly talk about that. We've done emerging market debt. We've done the Privacore joint venture. There's more that I'd like to do, and there's plenty in the pipeline, which I'll talk about in a second. But the concept there is to fill gaps that we have.
I believe in scale of scope, not necessarily scale of size for the sake of size. So from a pipeline perspective, it's a very robust pipeline right now. It, frankly, has been a very robust pipeline, but we're going to continue to do what we've done, which is be very, very disciplined. There are no deals that well, except for one deal, there's no deal that has been announced that we have not heard of or been a part of and not decided to pass on or figured that it's not the right fit for us. And a lot of it is driven less so by the financial implications to it, and we're going to be very, very disciplined there. But it's also to make sure the team we bring on board is an attractive team for shareholders and for our clients over the long term.
I want to hone in on the alts vertical and private credit specifically. When you look at the prior transactions, generally, the multiples were higher than where the JHG stock trades at today. How do you solve for this versus where traditionals trade versus where alts are taken out? It looks like it makes the M&A scenario a little tougher.
Yeah. I mean, look, a solution is that our stock continues to go up, but we'll see how that plays out. Look, a couple of things I'd say. One is, yes, absolutely, alts and private credit are areas where we are quite focused. The good news is, on the alt side, we have a very strong foundation there with our multi-strat business that is $several billion and continuing to grow, and there's clear demand from our clients. So there are things we can do there. And what we've found is that there's an interaction between alts and solutions, which we had probably underestimated in delivering solutions to clients. And so that's a very clear focus you're right for us.
We think there's an enormous growth opportunity for someone like Janus Henderson to bring in more alternatives in the context of solutions and otherwise to our client base. And then, of course, one we've talked about quite publicly about for a little while now is on the private credit side as well. A little bit less of a pressure point on the multiples for the liquid alternatives. But on the private side, the private credit side, the illiquid side, yes, there has been a valuation kind of gap there. I would say that has started to close. I don't think they'll trade at 6x EBITDA, right? But that valuation gap, like Janus Henderson does, but that valuation gap has started to close quite meaningfully. And not just from an industry perspective, but as it relates to Janus Henderson too.
Because the reason we want somebody to join us isn't because we want to cash them out, isn't because we want a group of people who will go sit off in the corner and I can just check the box and say I have private credit. That's not interesting to me. Again, the reason we want this group to come along is that it's client-led in that we can grow their business because clients demand those products. So that's a value that the target has to think about as well. We are no longer really having an enormous amount of difficulty overcoming that thought process with our targets, with the leaders of our targets, because they see the value we can create by bringing their product into retail, right, let alone the institutional global business that we have, but bringing it into retail and grow their business much faster.
They have to believe that coming to Janus Henderson accelerates their growth trajectory, right? And so they're willing to have a lower multiple than they would by some financial buyer. And that message is becoming more and more clear, particularly as Privacore, this joint venture in the private markets, is starting to gain some traction.
Great. With that, let's just see if there's any questions in the audience. Please raise your hand. Oh, we have one in the front up here.
Thank you for taking the question. Could you share your perspective on areas of the business that could maybe help you extend your global reach? And then from a regional view, where do you see the most change or potential for growth? Thank you.
Sure. So we're very fortunate at Janus Henderson that we are a really global company, probably even a more global company than our scale would suggest in some sense. We have 24 to 25 offices around the world. Half our business is outside the U.S., as an example. We have a really strong base to start from. We've been in Asia for 30 years, etc., etc. Given that franchise, we do have a lot of opportunities to, as I'd call it, lift and shift things from other parts of the world, most notably, most recently, the U.S. to other areas. So we talked a little bit with Craig up here about our active fixed income ETF franchise.
I think there's enormous potential for us to think about how we can lift and shift that process to other areas of the world that are just starting to think about ETFs as an example. We have some of the right products for those areas. We have to think about how to deliver that to our client base. So that's one example. We also think that there are investment strategies, not just wrappers, investment strategies that we can bring to other parts of the world. So one of the great success stories I mentioned Balanced before, one of the great success stories is actually Balanced and bringing that franchise across the globe and really growing that business so that people can have exposure in places like Latin America and continental Europe and in Asia to the Balanced franchise.
I think there are real pockets around that, for example, on our small and mid-cap franchises. So whether it be our U.S. small and mid-cap or European or U.K. or Japanese or global small and mid-cap, I think there's real opportunities as well from that perspective. Global Research is also a fund that we think has enormous opportunity, particularly in Asia, to grow. We're seeing lots of interest there too. So there's a combination of kind of vehicle plus product that we think has potential to expand. I would be remiss in not mentioning, however, also process improvement that we can lift and shift. So we've talked about some of the process improvement we've brought to bear in the U.S. intermediary channel. We do think that some of those processes can be adjusted.
It's not a perfect kind of translation, but we can kind of adjust those and customize those to different parts of the world where there will be KPIs. There will be much more dispersion of pay. There will be those types of things we think we can bring to bear those experiences elsewhere in the world. Again, it's a pretty easy shift to do because we are such a global company, and that's one of the benefits that we think we can continue to expand at the firm. So vehicle, product, and then process is how I think about it.
I think with that, we are out of time. Ali, on behalf of all of us at Bank of America, thank you very much.
Thanks, Craig. Thanks very much. Thanks, everybody.