Michael Hecht (Banc of America Securities): How much of a change was there across the different fund complexes?
Chip Mason: Their total assets are within 2% or 3% of where they were a year ago or six months ago. The theory that their assets are down a lot is inaccurate. We have other managers that are off, but it has been even.
Michael Hecht (Banc of America Securities): How have the flows that you are seeing into Royce and Batterymarch holding up?
Chip Mason: Generally decent but there is some slow down in some of them. If Brandywine continues to have relatively strong flows, a lot of it is institutional so it gets much lumpier. Our numbers are skewed by institutional because it is the bulk of our assets and those numbers tend to come in much lumpier because they are based on when the bids go out and it does not happen every day or every week.
In the case of say Brandywine, institutional is important to them and they do come in very big. That would be true of many of our managers that aren''t totally into the mutual fund business. Royce would be different because their business is heavy mutual funds.
Michael Hecht (Banc of America Securities): How much cash is available at the parent for repurchasing stock?
Barry Bilson: It is about $500 million, excluding some contingent payments coming up
.
Douglas Sipkin (Wachovia): On the distribution relationship with Citigroup, are you not concerned that they do not have as much of an invested interest in you?
Chip Mason: I do not see this as an issue at all. We have institutional holders that are larger than their piece. Their feeling was that they should have some long-term interest in us.
Barry Bilson: They are a key strategic partner in the distribution for us and it was a very amicable arrangement. They still do have the exclusivity in place on the primary share plays as the retail share player. They have some broadening capability outside of that but the relationship is as solid as ever and very important to us. |