Good morning everyone. My name is Mike Brown. I cover U.S. asset managers and brokers here at UBS. I'm excited to have Chris Hogbin here on stage today for his very first conference president presentation as Lazard's new asset management CEO. For those that you do not know Chris he was appointed CEO of the roughly $265 billion AUM franchise in September and started his role in December of last year. With three decades of global investment leadership Chris brings deep experience overseeing the multi-asset investment platforms at scale and most recently serving as global head of investments at AllianceBernstein. So Chris thank you so much for joining us today.
Thanks Mike. Great to be here.
So Chris just to start I know a lot of folks would probably love to hear a little bit about what brought you to Lazard. You came from an excellent firm. So when you were considering the opportunity to join Lazard as CEO of asset management what were some of the key aspects that attracted you to Lazard and then to the asset management business?
Sure. So you know after 20 years at AB I thought I'd probably never leave, but what attracted me a few things. Look, first and foremost you know just a really exciting vision that our group CEO Peter Orszag set for the business. And you've read about that on Lazard 2030. But to have you know the energy, enthusiasm, and competitiveness coming from the top was you know was really appealing. Secondly, I looked at the business and it's a business that's got some real strengths. I'm sure we'll kinda come to talk a little bit more about them, but it's got great strength in investments. It's got great strengths in you know in distribution. But as I was looking at the business it's a business where I realized you know there's still some things we can improve.
Particularly coming from, you know, the outside and seeing how other asset managers approach these things, realized it was a business I could have an impact on. Suddenly, you know, having spent, you know, 10 years as a consultant, 20 years, you know, in various investment and executive roles at AB in various locations around the world, I thought I had something to, you know, really offer in moving the business forward. So it was all of those things kinda coming together that made for a pretty compelling opportunity for me.
Great. Yeah makes sense. So if we think about your kinda first 100 days in the role you're about two-thirds of the way through that.
Thanks for reminding me.
Maybe talk a little bit about some of your your top priorities as you start to really get your hands around the opportunity set here. What are some of the priorities to maybe refresh and reposition the franchise and maybe some of the initiatives that you think you could have kinda the most impact on?
Sure. So look, there's really three areas. You know, the first is really to ensure that we deliver. Okay? And as an asset manager, the most important thing we can deliver is investment performance for our clients. So as I look at the investment performance that we're delivering at the moment, as of the end of the year, about two-thirds of the AUM is outperforming its stated benchmark. And that's okay. It's improved sequentially through last year. But it's not where we need it to be or aspire for it to, you know, to be. So we gotta really address that. So one of the first things I did was appoint a Chief Investment Officer for Lazard, a gentleman called Eric Van Nostrand. What that role let me be very clear.
That role is not to set a top-down view for Lazard that the portfolio managers are all gonna implement. What that role is is to be a point to oversee the portfolio managers to engage with the portfolio managers to challenge them on their positioning to help them with their thinking. It's also to ensure that we're really bringing out the benefits of the breadth of a platform as broad as Lazard. I'm very confident that an emerging market analyst has insights that a developed markets analyst can benefit from. A fixed income PM is thinking things that an equity analyst can benefit from understanding.
You know, the second part of Eric's role is really about kind of, you know, Ben, you know, bringing together the investors and sort of finding easy forums for them to share, you know, the data, the analysis in front of them. And the third bit is to just ensure over time that we can continue to invest in our processes, our technology, our resources to ensure we can remain at the, you know, at the cutting edge. You know it's around delivering investment performance. That's gonna take time to come through. But I think in Eric we have, you know, a very strong leader to, you know, to oversee that. It's clearly around delivering, you know, delivering for our clients. It's ensuring that we continue to, you know, have great sales, you know, relationships with, you know, with our key, you know, key counterparties.
So it's around delivering. Right? The second part is around growing. Okay? The most important way we can grow is by scaling what we already have. In asset management the secret of success is having scale in individual products. Now the good news here is you know after many years of outflows last year I do view as a year of transition in our business. While we had one very significant you know client term relationship close if you exclude that last year we had $8.5 billion of net inflows. You saw just yesterday we started the year you know with good momentum with just under $3 billion of net inflows in January. So we need to continue to lean into that to ensure that organic growth comes through.
Beyond that organic growth, there's gonna be opportunities to, you know, expand into new areas. Right? And we'll need to be very focused around that and diligent and selective. But there'll be opportunities there. So it's around delivering. It's about growing. And then the third is about sort of capitalizing on that growth and ensuring that as we grow we do so in a way that is profitable. Okay? The margins for our business are not where we would like them to be. So as we grow we need to do it without adding cost to the business so that we can have operating leverage come through as we, you know, deliver that growth. So my priorities are really across those three buckets.
So so maybe if we dive in a little bit deeper there and maybe you can kinda bucket the opportunities here a little bit. Maybe walk us through where you see the strategic mix of the business if you kinda bucket it by say one protect and grow maybe two invest and enhance and then three where's maybe the true white space opportunities for Lazard Asset Management?
Sure. So in terms of you know protect and grow we got a lot of things that are working. And you see that in the you know in the net flow figures. So that's around you know our systematic equities our global listed infrastructure emerging markets Japan. So we really need to kinda ensure that we continue to deliver there and you know those things can continue to grow. The nice thing is there's actually kind of quite a lot of other things bubbling under. We're having a lot of interesting client conversations in the you know in the fixed income space increasingly and in you know other other you know other equity strategies. So there's a lot that's working and we need to kinda lean into. Look in terms of investing you know there are there are a couple of different parts to that.
You know, 1 is ensuring that we kinda continue to invest in you know the investment team so that we can innovate new you know new products and nurture the ones that are you know that are newer. It's also about investing in products or sorry vehicles. You know, so just over the last year we went from 0 to $1 billion across 7 active ETFs in the U.S. So it's continuing to invest in you know in areas like that. In terms of the white space, you know, I sort of see 3 long-term kinda drivers or areas to explore. Look, the first is clearly the traditional public markets space. If you look at our footprint of business today, it's about three-quarters equities, then some fixed income and multi-asset. But there's a lot of public market areas that we're you know we're not in.
I see opportunities to you know engage to either hire acquire teams there. Look, the second is clearly private markets where you know we have you know a small footprint there. We've got a venture capital business in France with Allya. But there's a lot that we don't do there. And then the third is the wealth area. We do have a you know a wealth business today in France and the U.S.. But you know clearly a very big space around us there as well. So as I think about this year it really is about the kinda delivering but ultimately start to think about what are the longer-term growth vectors that we can lean into across those three areas of white space.
Okay, great. So, with the full acknowledgement that you are still quite new in the role and yes, thinking about maybe the white space opportunities might not be the, you know, first order of business. But maybe just unpack that a little bit more. And when you think about kinda tackling that opportunity, is that something that you can do organically or does this require some M&A to do so or maybe it's some combo?
Yeah. I mean, look, I think the first thing I'd say is we've managed to—you know, as you look at the history of Lazard, you can see we've managed to tackle a lot of those opportunities organically. Whether that is, you know, developing our systematic equities capability, whether it's about the—you know—the ETF build-out, et cetera. We've done, you know, all of that organically. You know, inorganic is—you know—is it is clearly gonna—you know—should be part of the mix. But one needs to be incredibly selective. You know, if I think about—I mean, think about just the public market space to start.
You know, if we decided a particular area was, or a particular capability was, attractive to us, we'd need to go out and you start with a really broad funnel, all the firms that are and teams that are out there. Then you say which of those have got attractive, you know, performance? Which of those performance streams are the result of a sort of robust repeatable process that we can kinda get confident will, you know, will endure? Where's there a good cultural fit? Where are they gonna benefit from being at Lazard? Where are we gonna benefit from having them? And where can we get the economics to line up? And so you go from a very broad funnel to a very narrow end of the funnel, you know, pretty quickly.
You know, to give you some kind of you know numbers around that. In my previous role at AB, I lifted out a team from AGI to do global and European growth equities. That search started with me reaching out to almost 100 teams to land one . So there's a lot of work that goes through that funnel. So you know that's how I think about it. You gotta be incredibly you know incredibly selective. So that's how I think of it you know in the public space. Look, in the private space you know it's no shock to anybody in this room valuations look expensive or high. And the history of a number of asset managers traditional asset managers who've moved into that space have been somewhat checkered. You know so I think again we need to think creatively about that space.
Would a partnership make more sense et cetera? A lot more work to do there. Then in the wealth channel, you know, the successful models appear to be a good mix of organic and small inorganic liftouts or team hires that could, you know, potentially help grow that business. Inorganic's gonna, you know, should play a role but it needs to be a very selective, you know, part. These are sort of teams and small firms. They're not, you know, big game-changing acquisitions.
Maybe just a quick follow-up on the private asset side. I think that's something that you know has been talked about for maybe a number of years. And you know the valuation disconnect there and you know kinda the elevated valuations in the space certainly makes sense as to maybe why we haven't seen anything. But when you think about the asset class opportunities out there, is there maybe a few that you think are kind of top priority for Lazard if you were able to find the right manager?
Yes, but I'm not gonna say which ones. Look, I think it for, you know, for us particularly if you think of it as a partnership as opposed to, you know, an individual acquisition. It's around saying where do we have a set of strengths that we could marry with, you know, with a private asset manager. So, look, there, you know, as you might imagine, a bunch of areas we're looking at, but none that I'm ready to talk about just yet.
Makes sense. So one thing that is clearly playing nicely into Lazard's hands at the moment is really the fact that the international markets for the first time in a decade actually outpaced the S&P 500 in 2025. So maybe talk a little bit about how institutional investor sentiment has been improving there. What are you starting to see? What are you noticing in some of your mandate wins and maybe the outlook for funding there? And do you expect that to continue to gain momentum in 2026?
Sure. So look, I've spent the last month going around the world meeting asset owners. So let me try and summarize what I, you know, what I'm hearing. You are getting increasing skeptic, you know, an increasing set of asset owners who are looking at a couple of things. They're looking at how far the U.S. has run. They're looking at where valuations are. They're looking at, you know, geopolitical tensions. They're looking at opportunities elsewhere. And I think all of that kinda comes together, you know, to lead to a reevaluation of positioning, you know, and a sense that they, that they're looking to diversify. Right? And we're starting to see that in flows.
If I think about, you know, our business today, about two-thirds of the assets that we manage are non-dollar denominated to give you a sense of our kinda international exposure. You know that comes from emerging market strategies. It comes from international and global strategies. And you know that is where we're seeing a lot of client interest. If I look at where the flows came last year, if I look at our $1 billion but not yet funded pipeline of $13 billion, you know a lot of those are into those kinda international sort of services. So we're seeing a lot of, you know, a lot of interest there. The other area where we're starting to see, you know, a pick-up in interest is strategies that perhaps have, you know, a little bit less tracking error in them.
In a way, you could almost think of it as this spectrum from pure, you know, pure active to pure passive. Along, you know, if you think of that as a spectrum, you can end up in a set of strategies that are still active but with lower tracking error. A number of our systematic services are very well positioned to deliver that. So that's been another area you know another area of growth.
Great, great. Okay. So yesterday you alluded to this, the fact that you had almost $3 billion of net inflows in a month, January. So certainly a strong result for Lazard. I think over 13% annualized growth. Maybe break down what came through in that mix. Was it kinda focused on any particular strategy or region? And maybe give us a view into those flows.
Sure. It's always terrifying when you annualize one month. So please please please don't bake that in just yet. But obviously we're very pleased to see you know to see the you know the strong flow picture. It's really a combination of the answer you know the answers to a few a few previous questions. It is more into services like our systematic equities like a number of our international services our listed infrastructure service our Japanese equity service. So there's a breadth to it but the commonality to that is it's more international and global more international and global in nature. There are also services with you know very strong underlying you know underlying investment performance.
You know the interesting thing 'cause we you know at the end of last year sort of came out and said look we expect to be net flow positive for all of 2026. What gave us that confidence partly is the level of flows that we saw in that one but not funded pipeline. But it's more it comes from the breadth of where we're seeing the flows. So if I look back to 2025 you know the flows came across a wide set of products. And it came from a wide set of clients and a wide set of geographies. So if I cut our business between the U.S., Europe and Asia all three regions were net flow positive last year.
It's that breadth across each of those three dimensions that gives us, you know, year-over-year, you know, the heightened confidence in the flow picture for the year.
In the $13 billion one but not yet funded mandate pipeline, did that come down now that $2.9 billion inflowed or was that kinda $13 billion number actually quoted after you kinda knew where the flows were gonna land in a month?
So the $13 billion was as of our results date at the beginning of the year. I'm not gonna get drawn into giving a day-by-day number because as you might imagine you know if something funded yesterday that number kinda comes you know down. What I will say is there's been a robust level of activity. You know so the number hasn't materially you know materially changed. And we're seeing you know a lot of interest. The you know distribution teams are very busy. The PM teams are very busy meeting clients. I am as well. So we've sort of seen the level of activity stay pretty stable through the last few months.
Okay, great. Let's switch gears and talk to one of the other successes that's been playing out more recently, the active ETF.
Yep.
Side of the business. So you talked about the fact that you went from 0 products to 7 products. You're kinda at $1 billion of AUM in the space. Maybe talk a little bit about what's the next chapter for the Active ETF business.
Yeah. Yeah. So look, the first thing about active ETFs, the success of them is really about whether you've got successful strategies in them. Right? Are you a successful active manager? The ETF is a wrapper or a vehicle around that. So I think a lot of the success actually is due to the underlying success of the active management underneath. That said, you know, Rob Forsyth, who we hired about a year ago to lead that initiative, I think he's done a phenomenal job in scaling the business out. The key thing in the active ETF business is to actually have again scale quickly, get to scale in individual strategies, because you know there are the platforms that you can list on will have AUM minimums. So you want to be able to kinda get quickly to $100 million, $300 million, $500 million.
Then you can get on more and more platforms and you get that J curve coming through in the, you know, in the growth. As we look forward, we'll continue to add active ETFs. You know, in the U.S. there's this whole discussion around, look, should you have an ETF share class et cetera, et cetera. We now have the optionality to do that. Speaking to our distribution partners, they're not really terribly excited about that. So we'll keep that as optionality for now, but we'll continue to, you know, innovate new ETFs and convert some mutual funds. And we're starting to look at other geographies. You know, most near term, you know, Europe's in our crosshairs as to what we need to do there.
Maybe if we zoom out a little bit and we think about the active ETF space and if we use the baseball analogy where's the industry at in that journey? Are we still kinda early days or are we kinda middle middle innings?
That's a good question. I still feel we're fairly early, you know, early innings in it. You know, $1 billion is great from 0 at the beginning of last year, but it's still 0.5% of our, you know, global AUM. And I think that's representative across a number of the leading peers. So I think there is more, you know, more room to go. And you know, primarily I believe in the US given the tax advantage of the vehicle. But we are starting to see increasing, you know, client demand for it. And ultimately this is a business where we want to, you know, serve our clients where they wanna be met or meet our clients where they want to be served. Sorry.
We will follow that client, you know, that client demand.
Great, great. But it is also a space that a lot of your big competitors have been kinda leaning into and trying to grow more and launch more products. So how do you make sure that you can continue to kinda stand out in that increasingly crowded field?
Yeah, look, I think ultimately it comes down to a few things. First and foremost, it comes down to do we have the right investment strategies underneath them. And if you have great investment strategies underneath them, you know, they tend to work better. And as you can see in the seven that we've launched, it's a mix of some of our flagship strategies. So our global listed infrastructure, emerging market equities, along with some newer things, you know, emerging tech, et cetera. You know, so first and foremost it's that. Secondly, it's working, you know, making sure our distribution partners are working, you know, hand in glove—sorry, our sales teams are working hand in glove with the distribution partners to make sure that we're supporting them in and you know rolling them out.
Great, great. So again, 2025 was kinda a bigger year for investment in the active ETF business. At this point, a lot of the investment to kinda get that off of the ground essentially kinda behind you. And so how do we think about maybe the incremental investment that you may need in that space?
Yeah, I think, you know, look, suddenly the cost in terms of bringing the team together, you know, the technology under on, you know, required to launch it was in 2025. There'll be, you know, they'll recur in 2026, but the incremental cost should be very low going forward as we launch additional ones.
One of the common questions that we get about Lazard from the investment community is a focus on the margins.
Mm-hmm.
Right? And Lazard screens at a lower margin than the broader industry. And it's kinda continued to come down in recent years. And certainly some investments have been part of the reason for that. But as you know come in with a fresh perspective how do you think about that opportunity to maybe close the gap to the industry average? And is there anything structural that'll kinda limit your ability to get there?
Great question. You know, I won't be drawn on a specific target, but I will say that the margins are not where we would like them to be. How do you improve the margin from here? And sorry to directly answer your question, I don't see anything structural. Right? That would prohibit us improving margins. The first thing that we, you know, want to do to drive margin is to grow and grow in our existing products. 'Cause that's a very high incremental margin when we can do it. So you know, first and foremost focus, you know, focus on that. Look, the second part is then to sort of go work through and say look, where can you take cost out.
You know, one of the observations, and this is true across a lot of asset managers, is that we have a broad set of products and investment strategies. A small number of those drive a disproportionate amount of our revenue and profitability. And then there's a long tail of other products. Many of those products will drive our future growth, but some of them won't. Okay? So we really need to be, you know, fairly aggressive in looking at those smaller products where we've got less conviction in and look to move resources away from those or potentially rationalize them so we can focus on, you know, other areas. And that will help with, you know, the margin.
We've done some of that, you know, but, you know, I think we need to sort of step up the pace, you know, around that, and that focus, you know, that focus should help. We then just need to be incredibly disciplined around cost so that as we grow we're not adding cost. And one of the important hires or appointments I made at the beginning of this year was we had a COO transition. And Rosalie Berman became our new COO. Rosalie spent 20 years in operational leadership roles at Morgan Stanley. And has, you know, is really kinda taking a very fresh look at a lot of the processes, you know, and cost controls in our business. And I think that that should bear some fruit as, you know, as we look, as we look through the, you know, the cost structure.
There's no silver bullet in this where it's like there'll be one thing we need to change. It is just about having, you know, very rigorous cost discipline. So having, you know, Rosalie there as COO, sort of working with me and my leadership team, is gonna be critical to making sure that, you know, we do deliver that operating margin as the operating leverage as, you know, as our revenue growth comes through.
Maybe a follow-up on that point, Chris. When you talk about some of these strategies that perhaps you know as you may identify as having kind of an inability to scale to a level that you know makes the ROI makes sense, what does the time frame look like in terms of addressing that opportunity? Is that something that's kinda multi-year run or is that something that's kinda more of a 2026 event?
I think it has to be ongoing. Right? I don't think you ever want to be done looking at your portfolio and you know kinda figuring out what's there. But as Eric, you know, settles in as CIO, as I, you know, settle in as CEO, we'll have time to address it. So I think we need to kinda you know maybe there's a you know we accelerate it a little bit this year and next and then you know it it becomes more sort of business as usual going forward.
Got it, great.
To be clear, we're talking about the kinda tail. So a lot of these are strategies that are sub $100 million. Right? They're not kinda you know so you may not see it in an AUM line but you'd see it just as you know a you know in the headlines as strategies rationalized.
Got it. And you know, just to follow up on my question about the kinda structural element of the margin differential. My, the reason I ask that is you certainly are quite a global asset management franchise, and so when you look at the breadth of the global business, is there any opportunities to maybe rationalize some elements of the expense base or maybe said the other way to get some more growth out of your business such that you can get better operating leverage on the revenue side?
So look, I think the, you know, the global footprint is a feature not a bug of the Lazard model. You know, in the, on the investment side and the distribution side. You know, we do, you know, the, and look, as you might imagine, as you start to look afresh at the operating model that supports that, for sure there'll be some opportunities for us to think about, look, how do we manage that. You know, for example, when we have a global capability, you know, let me choose an example. You know, RFP responding. Right? So we have a team of folks, you know, who sit responding to, you know, RFPs coming in from, you know, from institutional clients. That's generally centralized. A little bit of so offshore already.
But then in each region you have a local person who's, you know, just adapting it a little bit, et cetera. You know, is that the right model for, you know, for writing RFPs? Is that, you know, is that gonna move the needle on its own in terms of our margin? No. But as you go through every process and think about where should you be global versus local, what's the right balance to, you know, to get right? There, there'll be opportunities. And you know certainly with me coming in afresh, Rosalie coming in afresh, and you know a brand new C group CFO, and he and I are very focused on this. I think they'll, you know, we'll uncover opportunity.
Right, right. Maybe just double click a little bit into the distribution and sales force. Again, it's only been a couple of months but as you've had a chance to kind of get your hands around the strength of the business and maybe identify some opportunities there based on your prior experience what have you kind of observed thus far? Maybe where could the incremental investment dollars be spent there?
Yeah, I mean, look, the first thing I'd say is I've been really impressed by the distribution teams at Lazard. And I think, you know, that there's some wonderful proof points if you look at the level of gross sales last year, a record $55 billion, the net flows, and the level of current business activity. So, you know, I'm working with a great team. I think that the incremental dollar really does have to be about how do we get more people on the front line. If you look particularly in, you know, in the intermediary business, the wirehouses, the RIAs, the broker dealers, third-party distribution around the world, you know, to win in that business you gotta have great products but you've also really gotta work with those partners to support them in the field.
Right.
You know that's an investment we've been making in the US over the last couple of years. But I see high, you know, high ROI in you know adding additional heads there. We've gotta figure out how do you find that. So that's around kinda getting the operating system or operating model right in the backbone to you know to free that up. But I think there's real advantage to you know to doing that with you know with hopefully fairly quick payoffs.
One area that I think has been a little bit overlooked for the asset management business has been the expansion with the intermediaries and kinda the wealth management.
Yep.
Space more broadly. That's been a good vector of growth for you. Can you maybe just give us an update on the investments there and maybe where you see the opportunity set in that channel specifically and how you can really unlock it more?
Yeah, sure. So I mean just to kinda level set, the intermediary part of our business is around just under half—you know, just under half—of our business. And it's been growing nicely. How do you win there? I mean, look, I feel like a broken record saying this. First of all, you gotta have the right products. Right? With good investment performance. Second, you gotta have the right vehicles. Increasingly in the U.S., that's around having active ETFs. It's around having SMA capabilities. You gotta have the right support model. And that is, you know, about—you know—having people in the field as well as for the home offices. So we've been through a process in the U.S. of channelizing our field teams, you know, to service the intermediaries so that, you know, they're better aligned with our major partners.
The other part of this, and you know I've been meeting with each of our big intermediary partners over the last couple of weeks, is you know how do we partner with them. A large part of that is around sort of thought leadership. And one of the things that they are constantly you know kind of looking for and I think it's a real opportunity for us is how can we provide thought leadership to them both the home offices and the field teams to help them better serve their own clients. Right? And one of the areas that you know kind of keeps cropping up and I think is a real interesting part of Lazard is a unit that started on the FA side of our business but we now leverage that's our geopolitical advisory business.
Now this is a group of, you know, government officials, CIA folks, military folks, et cetera, et cetera, who can kinda bring pretty interesting perspectives very quickly around geopolitical events. For sure there's quite a lot of those going on at the moment. That's a sort of capability that we can bring to bear with some of these big intermediary partners, whether that's speaking at events, whether it's kinda providing information quickly so that their advisors can service their clients. So there's things like that that, you know, in IAs we think about the broad partnership is not just as simple as product and dis, you know, and sales support. There's a lot of a lot of other things that we can do around around the edges.
That brings up a really compelling point here. Certainly something that comes up in investor conversations is really that the opportunity with asset management and financial advisory together.
Mm-hmm.
You just made a really good point there and something that you can kinda leverage more on your side of the business. But from us on the outside it's always a little bit hard to see maybe the benefits of the.
Yep.
The two together and you know the power of the combined businesses. So again it's been early days but is there anything else you're really excited about having in that connection given that is something kinda newer to you?
Yeah, I mean, look, I think, you know, first of all, you know, there's just a very, you know, there's a very powerful brand across the, you know, the two businesses that, you know, both reinforce. I do think that kind of power too, you know, we talk about the kind of power to convene. You know, and, you know, I think the geopolitical advisory is a big, you know, idea, a nice example of that around content to kind of provide the right context for decisions. That's very powerful on the FA side. It's very powerful on the asset management side both to our investors and to clients. I think there's a bunch of investments that we can make across the firm. I think AI is a really good example of that.
You know where we can leverage a lot of the investments that are being made on both sides, you know, both sides of the business. And then look, I think there are some real clear, you know, synergies that can over time be exploited. You know, I don't wanna overplay it right now, but we do have a wealth business. You know, as our, you know, FA advisors are, you know, in wealth creation events with clients, is that an opportunity to, you know, bring our wealth management business and create a win-win on both, you know, both sides of it. You know, so there are things like that that I think there's opportunities to exploit. We're not really doing that today, but over time there, you know, there could be some.
Great. I'm gonna pause there and just see if there's any questions in the room or if anybody wants to submit any questions you can do so through the app or through the web and I'd be happy to read them off. Okay great. So if any come then just go ahead and raise your hand. The wealth business I wanted to maybe dive into that just a little bit more. It's not something that we hear a lot about from Lazard again given its kinda smaller relative size. If this is a strategy that you do ultimately kind of invest in and grow more what could that look like? How would you ramp that business maybe talk about France versus the U.S. and where you see the opportunity maybe in the U.S. based on what you've learned in France?
Yeah, so look, the businesses that we have today are a little bit different both sides of the Atlantic. So in, you know, in France we have a closed-architecture wealth business along with a private bank. And it's a nice business. It's nicely profitable. And it, you know, it grows, you know, kinda grows nicely. I do think there's opportunity there given, you know, the strength of the investment offering and the client servicing to continue to scale that in France. And clearly over time there might be opportunities to expand that geographically. You know, all the caveats I've said earlier about being very selective in, you know, in any acquisitions, but you could also do that, you know, organically as well. So, you know, that's a part of our business that's attractive.
The attractiveness of it beyond the margin et cetera is the persistence of those revenue streams. You know, if you kinda go through, you know, our overall business, it's sort of like retail money has, you know, is the shortest duration. You know, institutional is longer and then private wealth tends to be even longer than that. In the U.S., it's a slightly different business. We acquired a business called Truvvo four years ago five years ago four years ago. And that's more of a, you know, a high net worth family office kinda offering that does sort of asset allocation manager research selection. It's a really interesting investment capability. And I think there's opportunity again to, you know, to scale that. Over time, as I step back and look, it's really early days, so don't overweight these, you know, these comments.
But as I look at asset wealth businesses that have scaled, they've generally done it through a combination of organic growth as well as some very limited sort of add-ins, whether that's sort of team liftouts or small acquisitions. So we're, you know, doing some work to educate ourselves and figure out what the right path forward is there.
Okay great. AI you brought it up and I guess I'd love to maybe unpack that a little bit more as you think about your business and you think about the opportunities here. How could you use AI more in terms of the investment process and then if you think about again maybe coming back to the margins or the expense side?
Yep.
Where is there maybe some opportunities on the efficiency side as well?
Yeah, so look, I'm, you know, you won't be surprised. I'm quite excited about the opportunity for AI. Critically, we hired a terrific guy, I, at the end of last year called Anthony Nicastro to be the AI lead for the asset management business. And really, we're trying to focus on, you know, on four areas. You know, the first is our investment process, investment research process. The second, our client experience. You know, the third is kinda efficiency automation. And the fourth is kinda risk governance, sort of oversight. There are a lot of processes underlying what we do, and you know, it's just having that second or third set of eyes. And you know, can AI play a role there?
Look, in the investment process, to, you know, to specifically answer your question, and I'm sure that everyone in the audience can understand this: a lot of the analyst time is spent actually compiling data from various sources, attending things, getting information together, et cetera. Then a bit of time spent analyzing it and frustratingly little time spent thinking what the implication is. And actually what we really wanna do is turn that on its head so that we've got more time to actually think and generate alpha. So I think that's where AI will really change and frankly improve the jobs of, you know, of the analysts. I think as you go through the investment, you know, kinda process, it can actually have a, you know, pretty interesting implications for, you know, for the portfolio construction, risk management, et cetera.
We're leaning in heavily to that. On the client side, we spend a lot of time writing client commentaries, sharing information with clients. And now that can, you know, 90% of that can be automated. You know, the first- and second-drafts can be written, meeting prep notes, et cetera, et cetera. So it's about making the sales teams more efficient so they more of their time is spent being in front of clients. So, you know, super excited about the potential, you know, potential for it. And again, it goes back to that notion of, you know, deliver, grow, and capitalize. And if we can use AI properly, that growth will kinda come through at a more attractive incremental margin.
Great. Okay. We're approaching the end of the session, but I just wanna give you an opportunity. Is there maybe anything we haven't covered today that you felt would be kind of important message for investors to hear?
Look, I mean, there's been a great set of questions, so thank you. I mean, just in, I you know, in closing, I get it that there's some skepticism about the asset management business. You know, but the reason I came to Lazard is I'm you know I really see some real strengths here. I feel very confident in the ability you know to improve the perimeter of what we have you know by delivering, growing it, and capitalizing on that through profitable growth. And then ultimately some very exciting long-term growth vectors. So I feel very confident that this should be can be a compelling part of the buy case on Lazard. And certainly can be a major contributor towards the Lazard 2030 ambitions that we've set out.
Great. Well, Chris, best of luck and thank you.
Thank you.
So much for joining us here in Florida.
Thank you very much.