Paul L. Audet: It is $15 million on an annualized basis.

Douglas Sipkin (Wachovia): The interest in long-dated strategies veined throughout the quarter. Is there any pick up in that interest or return given that parts of the credit markets are starting to act better?

Laurence D. Fink: Lots of the credit markets are not acting better. Lots of the housing products are not acting better. Our searches are bigger than ever. We have more searches going on, more of off keys than we have ever had. Their existing people are just delaying decisions and so it is too early to tell you at this moment whether there is a real change. We are constructive on the long-dated business in the future with the amount of searches we have and or up ease we have, coupled with the performance we have had over the last quarter.

Douglas Sipkin (Wachovia): What are your thoughts on the overall credit markets and how long the issues in it could potentially play out?

Laurence D. Fink: Secretary Paulson is doing a good job in alerting the world as to this housing price is not over and we got to get our arms around it. If we see that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have expanded power for securitization in terms of allowing more types of mortgages to be securitized and then the housing market will be less depended on the conventional housing market where there is a lot of congestion and problems. Housing market could resolve itself, but if the housing market does not resolve itself and the mortgage debt market does not resolve itself it is going to play out in many different areas and other types of credit and that is kind of binary. I do see solutions at hand; I do see Congress talking about these types of solutions. Unfortunately politics are once again playing a wicked hand and hopefully the housing start numbers today will alert our government that this problem is not getting better it is getting worse and it is going to jeopardize the future of our economy. I do believe that the housing market will erode consumer confidence and will erode the capital markets, if we do not solve these issues. There are solutions and that can fix it but if we do not find ways to making these solutions happen than we are going to get in to deeper problems or going to have a much wider spreads and a more difficult capital markets in the future.

Douglas Sipkin (Wachovia): What do think you about potential performance fees in the fourth quarter?

Laurence D. Fink: There are a number of products which lock in the fourth quarter and performance has been as strong as we have seen year-to-date in the third. It is hard to put in an exact number on it. You are not going to see anything like you saw in the third quarter. We continue to see some positive opportunities there.

Marc Irizarry (Goldman Sachs): How will acquisitions play out in the dollar demise in terms of getting more non-dollar denominated assets?

Laurence D. Fink: We are presently not looking at any acquisitions internationally. We are working on expanding our presence with our joint ventures in India. We have a platform already in China. We have list out teams in terms of equities overseas where we see huge opportunities. I would not say we are going to have the demise of the U.S. dollar, I believe in some areas the U.S. dollar is cheap. Especially versus Euro I do believe European markets are going to have as many problems as the U.S. I think the dollar will weaken a lot further. I do believe more-and-more U.S. investors are looking for more diversification away from dollar assets. It is not just our global clients are looking for greater diversification away from the dollar, but even our U.S. clients are looking for more diversification. Not just in bonds, not just in equities, but in alternatives, in real estate and in all the type of products that we have.

Michael Hecht (Banc of America): The fixed income performances this quarter slip again with 57% of top half of feasible one, three and five years. Last quarter it was 63%. Which product areas do you see weaker performance?

Laurence D. Fink: The issue in fixed income performance has nothing to do with the long-term trends this time. Our areas of strength have been in the high yield where we continue to have great performance. One of our credit products are having good performance, in line of our global products who are having good performance. We are seeing more-and-more clients looking to move away from core strategy to which we did discuss into LDI and other types of products. It is that type week construction that we are seeing a slow down in as people are trying to digest what the capital markets and credit markets are doing. We are going to see huge transformation out of core strategies into longer dated strategies, better matching assets and liabilities. We are going to see more-and-more global mandates and we are going to see more global mandate that are longer dated.

Michael Hecht (Banc of America): Can you touch on some of the areas that are weaker performance wise that drove the overall performance number down?

Laurence D. Fink: We have not seen any slow down due to performance issues. We have seen slow down just in deferral decisions and if you look at our pipelines, if you look at our RRPs, this is no different than what we saw in the third quarter of last year when we had a remarkable slowdown in some of the long-dated mandates. Overall, the asset mix is strong, the growth of our asset mix is getting stronger and having a $123 billion of organic growth in over a rolling 12 months is something that has exceeded our expectations and we think we have great opportunities to continue to build momentum in the future.

Michael Hecht (Banc of America): Some of your big competitors on the fixed income side have seen some weaker performance. Is that benefiting you and are you seeing any impact from other players who have entered the institutional fixed income space more recently outside of the big ghree players?

Laurence D. Fink: Thee other two players out of the big three are doing good. Short-term one of that may have better performance than the other; they are both firms that we respect a lot. They are going to get their lion share of business. The biggest change in the fixed income market has been that clients are moving out of core bond strategies into other strategies and so with that with long-dated products with other transport products you are going to see a different mix of investors, a different mix of investment managers. The business mix is changing, because client needs a changing, you are going to see changes in terms of investment managers. I do believe the big three are adapting rapidly into offering the longer dated strategies and different product strategies. I do not see any change in terms of the big three having a dominance in the marketplace but there is always room for the big eight or big ten. They are having more players in the fixed income market. We do not feel threatened in that market at this moment of time and we believe our performance in the third quarter in terms of avoiding credit proves again BlackRock may not be the sexiest of bond managers, but we are consistent in terms of risk avoidance and risk management.

Michael Hecht (Banc of America): From the $400 billion milestone you mentioned you reached in retail, how much of that is fixed income versus equity?

Laurence D. Fink: It is de minimus in fixed income. If you strip out money markets it is closer $250 billion in equities.

Michael Hecht (Banc of America): Can you talk about the retail opportunity you see on the fixed income side and whether you see upside there over time?

Laurence D. Fink: We have huge opportunities in fixed we just launched our fixed income platform in with our European and Asia platform where we had no fixed income so we are just rolling that out now. We continue to roll out more fixed income strategies and equity strategies with third party distributors in the United States. It should be a large component of our business.

Michael Hecht (Banc of America): The integration at MLIM is not a one year type of event. How much more work do you have to do there?