Mark R. Fetting: These market conditions are affecting everybody\''s pipeline on a relative basis. There is rotational trends going on so the shifts from value to growth, the shift from small cap to large cap is creating some opportunities. In the fixed income space, we continue to see good growth opportunities globally in many markets.

William Katz (Buckingham Research): Any comments on the capital raise with KKR?

Raymond A. Mason: Our cash position as we close at the end of this week is probably going to be $1 billion, if it should be much higher, but we probably have free cash of about a $1.6 billion which is dramatically more than we have ever had.

And this is the time regardless SIV or no SIV is strong, and but with SIV it is a good time to be strong and to show that corporately we are strong or well capitalized. We continue to look at the acquisition side and have been an active pursuer of particularly more or less outside the U.S. conceptually.

Michael Hecht (Banc of America Securities): Comment on some of the equity outflows?

Mark R. Fetting: Capital management on the fund side, particularly the retail fund side continues to have outflows and that has picked up a bit and that\''s fairly visible to you through the published sources. The institutional class of the fund and their institutional assets have better retention and that continues.

On ClearBridge, their two big chunks of business would be the fund side and the retail SMA side, and there on the fund side, the outflows have continued to be an outflow but there is some trend of improvement in terms of producing that.

Raymond A. Mason:To be fair to those managers, you all tend to place too much of this on ClearBridge. Private capital has outflows and we do not see this because they are not mutual funds, but to put this burden on ClearBridge, which has being going on for last 6-8 months, is a little bit strong because although they have had outflows, there are three prongs to where those outflows have come from.

Cynthia Mayer (Merrill Lynch): Do you believe the shifts in risk management might some how improve performance?

Mark R. Fetting: What we are talking about is at the corporate level, making sure we have the right resources and perspective on that. From an investing standpoint that\''s the province of our affiliates and we respect that. They have themselves very good and increased risk controls conforming to client requirements and fund guidelines, prospectus guidelines etcetera. This would just be an enhancement from a corporate standpoint.

Cynthia Mayer (Merrill Lynch): Given the four areas you mentioned performance, servicing, marketing, global expansion, which of these if any do you think can move the needle in terms of performance in the next two quarters?

Mark R. Fetting: In the spirit of investing being a starting engine the sooner that starts to improve, and if that were to be combined with shifts of positive nature in the market themselves, that can move things pretty quickly by virtue of just a market movement.

The global piece is interesting in that it could present through kind of product launches or distribution extensions with existing products, the opportunity to bring in some flows. We have been seeing some of that that moves the needle a bit such as progress in Japan, we just launched some products in China which will not move the needle short term, but it is an important strategic development.

Dan Fannon (Jefferies & Company): In terms of priority, how are you going to deploy capital as more capital is freed up from those assets?

Mark R. Fetting: We have always wanted to have conservative balance sheet. The second priority would be to support our existing products and initiatives, whether that\''s issues around SIV support or issues around launching new products, receipt capitals required etcetera. The third element would be acquisitions.

Robert Lee (Keefe, Bruyette & Woods): Do you envision having to migrate to that kind of distribution platform on the institutional side to take advantage of your product breadth and kind of the growing global scope of the business?

Mark R. Fetting: On the institutional side, the large separate accounts investments typically define benefit kind of investments are similar. There is a second part of institutional that where do work very closely. We are doing that and doing that quite effectively on a centralized basis working with the managers and markets where we gained share, would be the insurance sub-advisory business in the U.S., and we see a pick up of that globally.

Douglas Sipkin (Wachovia Capital Markets, Llc): Are there any ventures near term in place to improve the distribution?

Mark R. Fetting: We have been doing a lot of work under the hood, to shift from what was a proprietary on the retail side, particularly in the U.S. to an open architecture. We have brought in from Columbia fund, we have done quite a lot of work of pulling together a sales force that goes against all of the major broker dealers on a national basis and then there is a separate team going after what we call the Independent Advisors like LPL, and then a third team that goes after this insti-vidual market in the insurance sub-advisory piece as an example.

Douglas Sipkin (Wachovia Capital Markets, Llc): How damaging would a credit rating downgrade be for you?