00:00Well, what about the war in Iran? You know, I had spoken to Paul Taubman a couple of weeks ago,
00:04said it's time to put the pom poms away.
00:06Energy prices are elevated. They're falling this morning, but still around $100 a barrel. What happens if we stay there?
00:12Well, again, I think I can only talk to what we see. And what we see is an increase, a
00:16continued increase in dialogues between companies from an M&A perspective and a growth perspective.
00:21Remember, companies are trying to create incremental value. They've got to drive growth. And M&A is, as I said
00:27before, M&A is absolutely part of that.
00:28And, you know, if you have an elevated oil price, as an example, for a longer period of time, that
00:35will that will have to impact things.
00:37It will impact valuations. It will impact cost structures. What we're seeing in the current environment is is, you know,
00:43corporate management teams and boards not necessarily looking through it completely,
00:47but understanding that if this is temporary, we're going to get back to a moment where, you know, having done
00:53that M&A is going to be positive for their long term value creation.
00:56And it is a long term question. And if we have oil prices at this level for a long term,
01:02it will it will change things.
01:03But at the moment, that's not what we're seeing people act.
01:06What's the level or what's the dividing line between corporate boards saying this is short term and planning for that
01:13versus complacency?
01:14Is any complacency creeping in?
01:16People are laser focused on day to day movement. So I wouldn't say it's complacency. I'd say they're making educated
01:25decisions.
01:25They're making decisions about their strategies and their long term sort of visions with the information they have.
01:31If that information changes, you're going to see different decisions. But as we sit here today, that information hasn't slowed
01:37down the M&A market, as you said before.
01:39And it's as I said, it's it's it's fairly broad based. We've seen a lot more the uptick in cross
01:45border activity. I know it's something you like to talk about.
01:48We've seen this quarter. And again, I don't want to level set on one quarter. M&A is a long
01:53term business.
01:53But this quarter has seen an uptick in cross border activity, which we've talked about for a while as something
02:00that makes sense.
02:01International companies looking to grow, as I said, drive growth, but also looking to make their supply chains more resilient,
02:07more efficient.
02:08So as you think about covid, as you think about the tariff infrastructure that happened, those two events shine a
02:14light on that part of it.
02:16So growth and supply chain sort of resiliency makes sense for larger international companies to buy. The U.S. has
02:23been the principal place.
02:24They've got the biggest market for people to invest into because we've got a big market, a growing market and
02:30one that's sort of easier to operate than many around.
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