# Police & Fire Pension Board Meeting - February 12, 2025 > Auto-transcribed civic record · Board · February 12, 2025 - **Permalink**: https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/meeting/6337 - **Source video**: https://lfucg.granicus.com/player/clip/6337?view_id=14&redirect=true - **Date**: 2025-02-12 - **Body**: Board - **Last revised**: March 28, 2026 - **Length**: 15,941 words > ⚠️ **Auto-generated content.** Audio from the official Granicus video was auto-transcribed by OpenAI Whisper-1, with speaker labels folded in from Granicus closed-captioning. Structured facts were extracted with GPT-4o; the narrative summary was written by Anthropic Claude Sonnet. Speaker labels and verbatim wording may contain errors. See [methodology](https://meetings.lexingtonky.news/about/methodology) or [report a correction](mailto:editor@lexingtonky.news). --- ## Meeting Overview The Lexington Fayette Urban County Government Police and Fire Retirement Fund Board held its regular meeting on February 12, 2025, presided over by the Mayor. The board worked through a full agenda of 13 items covering individual member benefit actions, legislative updates, contractual matters, and investment presentations. Across the meeting, the board took 13 votes, approving items that included military service purchases, a widow's annuity, a contract extension, February disbursements, retirements and disabilities, and a position on House Bill 146. Three public comments were heard during the course of the meeting. In addition to its action items, the board received two formal presentations — one from Bailey Gifford and one from Cowan — and heard informational updates on topics including data requests from the prior board meeting, subcommittee activity, tributes, and the Social Security Fairness Bill. [timestamp: 00:00] ## Attendance The following individuals were present at the February 12, 2025 Board meeting: - Mayor - Commissioner Hensley - Commissioner Armstrong - Commissioner - Chief - Susan - Chad - Officer Jennings - John Jackson - Jim O'Connor **Absent:** Trey, Tommy Puckett No members were recorded as late. ## Votes and Decisions All votes at the February 12, 2025 Board meeting were conducted by voice vote and passed. No roll call votes were taken, and no individual vote counts were recorded. The following motions were approved: - **Reorder agenda** [timestamp: 0:02]: The Mayor moved, and Commissioner Hensley seconded, to move all agenda items requiring voting to the beginning of the docket. Passed by voice vote. - **Treasurer's Report** [timestamp: 0:03]: The Mayor moved to approve the Treasurer's Report and transfer letter. Passed by voice vote. - **January Minutes** [timestamp: 0:04]: The Chief moved to approve the January minutes. Passed by voice vote. - **Military purchases for Daniel Meyer** [timestamp: 0:04]: Susan moved to approve military purchases for Daniel Meyer. Passed by voice vote. - **Ghost time purchases for Jason Wallace** [timestamp: 0:05]: Motion to approve ghost time purchases for Jason Wallace. Passed by voice vote. - **Widow's annuity for Carolyn Meadows** [timestamp: 0:05]: Motion to approve a widow's annuity for Carolyn Meadows, seconded by the Chief. Passed by voice vote. - **Calen contract extension** [timestamp: 0:06]: The Chief moved to approve a two-year contract extension for Calen. Passed by voice vote. - **February disbursements** [timestamp: 0:07]: Chief Wells moved, and the Chief seconded, to approve disbursements for February. Passed by voice vote. - **Catherine Sullivan disability application** [timestamp: 0:08]: Motion to send Catherine Sullivan's application for total impairment occupational disability to appropriate doctors. Passed by voice vote. - **David Baker disability application** [timestamp: 0:09]: The Chief moved, and Director George seconded, to send David Baker's application to convert an existing service retirement to a total and permanent occupational disability to appropriate doctors. Passed by voice vote. - **Gregory Lingle disability application** [timestamp: 0:10]: The Chief moved to send Gregory Lingle's application to convert an existing service retirement to a total and permanent occupational disability to appropriate doctors. Passed by voice vote. - **Jamie Tinsley disability application** [timestamp: 0:11]: The Chief moved to send Jamie Tinsley's application to convert an existing service retirement to a total and permanent occupational disability to appropriate doctors. Passed by voice vote. - **Support for House Bill 146** [timestamp: 0:19]: Commissioner Armstrong moved, and Chief Wells seconded, to express support for House Bill 146, contingent upon board members reading the bill. Passed by voice vote. ## Public Comment Public comment at the February 12, 2025 Board meeting was devoted entirely to expressions of condolence for the Meadows family. Three speakers addressed the Board on this topic. - **Chief Wells** opened the public comment period by extending condolences to the Meadows family. Chief Wells highlighted Chief Ron Meadows' contributions to the Division of Fire and recognized his role in EMS innovation. [timestamp: 12:09] - **Chief Feathers** followed with condolences offered on behalf of the Police Department, acknowledging Chief Ron Meadows' outstanding service. [timestamp: 12:40] - **The Mayor** also addressed the Board, adding personal condolences and emphasizing the significance of Chief Ron Meadows' service to the broader community. [timestamp: 13:44] No other topics were raised during public comment. The remarks collectively reflected appreciation for Chief Ron Meadows' legacy across multiple departments and levels of local government. ## Contested Items - **Baillie Gifford Performance Review:** The board engaged in a heated discussion regarding Baillie Gifford's recent underperformance. The conversation centered on questions about the firm's investment strategy and its future outlook. The extracted data does not specify which individual board members were involved in the exchange, nor does it record a definitive outcome or resolution from the discussion. ## Military purchases for Daniel Meyer [timestamp: 04:51] The board considered a resolution regarding military purchases for Daniel Meyer. Susan was the key speaker on this agenda item, presenting the matter to the board for consideration. The resolution was approved by the board. *Note: Limited detail is available in the source data regarding the specific items discussed, any debate or concerns raised, or the particulars of the military purchases involved.* ## Ghost time purchases for Jason Wallace [timestamp: 05:21] The board considered a resolution regarding ghost time purchases for Jason Wallace. The item was brought forward for board review and action. No specific speakers, presentations, or debates are recorded in the available data for this agenda item. The board approved the resolution. ## Widow's Annuity for Carolyn Meadows [timestamp: 05:51] The board considered a resolution to approve a widow's annuity for Carolyn Meadows. The item was presented by the Chief, who brought the matter before the board for consideration and approval. The board approved the widow's annuity for Carolyn Meadows. No additional details regarding the specific terms of the annuity, the amount, or any debate or concerns raised during the discussion are reflected in the available record. ## Calen contract extension [timestamp: 06:21] The board took up Agenda Item 4, a resolution regarding a contract extension for Calen. The Chief presented the item to the board, proposing a two-year extension to Calen's existing contract. The board discussed the proposed extension before moving to a vote. The resolution was ultimately **approved**. *Note: The available data does not include details on specific arguments made, concerns raised, or vote tallies from this portion of the meeting. Readers seeking the full discussion are encouraged to consult the meeting transcript or recording beginning at approximately the 6:21 mark.* ## Data requests from the last board meeting [timestamp: 06:51] Commissioner Armstrong presented data in response to requests made at the previous board meeting. The presentation focused on individuals falling under the threshold of 1,750, which identified 11 individuals — all of whom were widows. The item was informational in nature, with no formal action taken or decision required from the board. ## Disbursements for February [timestamp: 07:21] The board took up Agenda Item 6, covering the disbursements for February. Chief Wells presented the item to the board, referencing the disbursements as listed on the agenda. The board considered the February disbursements and moved to a vote on their approval. The resolution was approved by the board. ## Retirements disabilities [timestamp: 08:21] The board discussed applications for total and permanent occupational disability for several individuals. The Mayor led the discussion on this agenda item. Following the review of the applications, the board approved the motion to send the cases to appropriate doctors for further evaluation. No additional details regarding the specific individuals involved, the nature of the disabilities under consideration, or any concerns raised during the discussion are available from the meeting record. ## Tributes [timestamp: 11:38] The Board paid tribute to Ronald Meadows, recognizing his contributions to the Division of Fire and EMS. Chief Wells, Chief Feathers, and the Mayor were among the key speakers who participated in acknowledging Meadows during this portion of the meeting. The tribute was informational in nature, with no action or vote required from the Board. ## Subcommittees [timestamp: 14:19] The Mayor briefly addressed the Subcommittees agenda item, noting that no updates were available from any subcommittees at this meeting. The absence of updates was attributed to key members not being present at the meeting. No subcommittee reports were presented or debated, and no concerns were raised regarding subcommittee matters. The item was informational in nature, with no action taken or decisions made. ## Social Security Fairness Bill [timestamp: 14:53] The Board received an informational update on the Social Security Fairness Bill during this portion of the meeting. The Mayor led the discussion, noting that the bill has passed. However, the Mayor indicated that there is currently no established timeline for when payouts associated with the bill will be distributed. No formal action was taken on this item, as it was presented for informational purposes only. ## House Bill 146 [timestamp: 19:23] The board discussed House Bill 146, a proposed state measure that would increase the dollar amount of pensions excluded from state taxes. Commissioner Armstrong was the key speaker on this item. The board considered whether to formally express support for the legislation. Following discussion, the board approved sending a letter of support for House Bill 146, with the condition that board members read the bill prior to the letter being sent. ## Bailey Gifford Presentation [timestamp: 21:24] Representatives Ian Campbell and Kelly Cameron appeared before the Board to deliver a presentation on behalf of Bailey Gifford, covering the firm's investment strategy, recent performance, and future outlook. The presentation addressed concerns about recent underperformance, with Campbell and Cameron providing context around Bailey Gifford's investment approach and the factors contributing to results. The discussion was informational in nature, giving Board members an opportunity to hear directly from the firm's representatives on these topics. No formal action was taken as a result of the presentation. The item was received as an informational update. ## Cowan Presentation [timestamp: 1:10:26] John Jackson and Jim O'Connor from Cowan appeared before the Board to deliver an overview covering the fund's performance, current market conditions, and manager updates. The presentation was informational in nature. The discussion addressed the fund's recent performance results alongside an assessment of broader market conditions. Jackson and O'Connor also provided updates on the fund's investment managers as part of their review. No action was taken as a result of this item; the presentation served as an informational update for the Board. --- ## Decisions - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Move all agenda items requiring voting to the beginning of the docket - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve Treasurer's Report and transfer letter - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve January minutes - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve military purchases for Daniel Meyer - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve ghost time purchases for Jason Wallace - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve widow's annuity for Carolyn Meadows - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve Calen contract extension for two years - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Approve disbursements for February - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Send Catherine Sullivan's application for total impairment occupational disability to appropriate doctors - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Send David Baker's application to convert an existing service retirement to a total and permanent occupational disability to appropriate doctors - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Send Gregory Lingle's application to convert an existing service retirement to a total and permanent occupational disability to appropriate doctors - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Send Jamie Tinsley's application to convert an existing service retirement to a total and permanent occupational disability to appropriate doctors - **Motion** — passed (0-0): Support for House Bill 146 contingent upon board members reading the bill --- ## Full transcript ♪ ♪ What could I do That's never been done before What can I say That hasn't been said by scores If I was a designer I could do nothing finer Than dress you in style But I'm a hopeless romantic Still behind all these annexes With a heart full of smiles So I'll just keep on dreaming I'll just keep on dreaming Thoughts that are in my brain You just keep on being Lady I can't explain I know that I'm The imagination of a child And there are times When I let it all run wild But if I hurt you forgive Still you won't let me live Some of those episodes down That's why I love you And put no one above you Love your sights and your sound So I'll just keep on moving I'll just keep on moving Thoughts that are in my brain You just keep on being Lady I can't explain ♪ Good morning everyone. It is February 12th, 2025 and I'd like to go ahead and call to order the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government Police and Fire Retirement Fund Board Meeting and I believe one of my colleagues up here has a motion. Thank you Mayor. I would like to make the motion that we move all agenda items to the beginning of the docket that require voting as we may have an issue with having a quorum a little bit later in this meeting. So moved. Second. Thank you. And Commissioner Hensley seconds. Any questions? All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? Thank you very much. So that makes our first item the Treasurer's Report. So Chad you're up first. Welcome. Good morning. You should have in your packet financial reports comparing November and December as well as the transfer letter and the fund reconciliation. The value of the plan as of yesterday morning was $1,890,625.23 which compares to last month of $974,795,388.36. We like that number. Yeah. All right. And we have our letter of transfer in the packet. So I'll entertain a motion to approve. Mayor, I make a motion to accept the Treasurer's Report and the transfer letter. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Any questions? All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Thank you very much. That takes us to the January minutes and I'll ask for a motion to approve. So moved. Thank you, Chief. Thank you, Commissioner. And are there any corrections, additions, questions? All right. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Thank you. Next we have new business. I'll ask Susan just to roll us through there. Yes, Mayor. Item number one is military purchases for Daniel Meyer. I need a motion to approve. Do I hear a motion? So moved. Thank you. Who seconded? Okay. Any questions? All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Item number two is ghost time purchases for Jason Wallace. I need a motion to approve. Do I hear a motion? Motion to approve. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions? All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? That passes. Item number three is widow's annuity for Carolyn Meadows. I need a motion to approve. So moved. Second. Second. Chief, thank you. Any questions? All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Item number four is Calen contract extension and you will find in your packet the updated contract. We need a motion to approve if we want to extend their contract for an additional five-year term, I believe it is. Two. Two. Okay. Sorry. Yes. Move it to approve for two years, ma'am. Second. Thank you, chief. All right. Are there questions? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Thank you. Item number five is data requests from the last board meeting. This was from Commissioner Armstrong. I took it upon myself just to hit a number. Anybody under the threshold of 1750, we had 11 individuals and they were all widows. You're welcome. Okay. Very good. Thank you for bringing that. I don't think we need a motion. No. That was just a request for information. Yes. We appreciate that very much. Item number six is disbursements for February. They're listed on your agenda. I need a motion to approve. Do I hear a motion? So moved. Thank you, Chief Wells. Second. Chief. I'm sitting here between the chiefs who are making these motions just like this. You've got to jump in faster, Rock. Maybe they've got somewhere to go. All right. Any questions about the motion? All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Next on the agenda are retirements disabilities. First is Catherine Sullivan, Division of Police, application for total impairment occupational disability. I need a motion to send to appropriate doctors. Do I hear a motion? Second. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Are there any questions? Yes, Mayor. Yes. Did I read in this report that this officer still has an upcoming appointment to attend? That is how the fit for duty reads, is that she's unable to do individual items until that new follow-up date. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? All right. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Next on the agenda is David Baker, Division of Fire, application to convert an existing service retirement to a total and permanent occupational disability. I need a motion to send to appropriate doctors. Do I hear a motion? So moved. Thank you, Chief. Who seconded? Okay. Thank you. Director George. Any questions? Yes, Mayor. Yes. On this disability request, the person filling it out, stating what duties they could and could not perform, every single one was checked that they're able to, which strikes me as how disabled can they be? I also noted that, as did several others. I mean, I don't know the answer. I'm pretty sure we're going to have to send them to two doctors anyway and hopefully get some clarification. Perhaps this is just an error in which box was checked, but it does strike me as unusual. Yes. It is unusual. Do you have any insight, Susan? I know that we've had others before that were able to do everything. We still sent them to appropriate doctors and hoping that they would make that assessment for us as opposed to us making it. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other questions? Okey-doke. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? Thank you. That passes. Next on the agenda is Gregory Lingle, Division of Fire, application to convert an existing service retirement to a total and permanent occupational disability. I need a motion to send to appropriate doctors. So moved. Thank you. Thank you, Chief. Thanks, Commissioner. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you. Thanks colleagues. Any other questions? Any questions? Thank you, Chief. Thanks, Commissioner. Any questions? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? Okay, thank you. That passes. Next on the agenda is Jamie Tinsley, Division of Fire, application to convert an existing service retirement to a total and permanent occupational disability. I need a motion to send to appropriate doctors. Is there a motion? Thank you, Chief. Is there a second? I'll second. Alright. Thank you, Chief. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Is anyone opposed? Alright. That motion passes. Next on the agenda are tributes. We have Ronald Meadows, Division of Fire, passed away on January 18th, 2025. Before we go to subcommittees, are there any comments? Chief Wells. Thank you, Mayor. On behalf of the Division of Fire, we'd like to extend our condolences to the Meadows family. Chief Ron Meadows served the Division of Fire from July of 1971 until January of 2000. One of the things, Mayor, that makes our organization, I think, unique and special across the country is the innovative and progressive ways that we have delivered EMS service. Chief Meadows, shortly after I came on the job, became the Battalion Chief overseeing EMS. It was something that, at that point in time, was very innovative and he continued to lead the way and was a great advocate for our community. Certainly his loss will be felt. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Chief Feathers. I just want to extend our condolences to the Meadows family as well. On behalf of the Police Department, his service is outstanding and he will be missed. So thank you. Thank you for that. Anyone else have any comments? Mayor, I also worked with Chief Ron Meadows and he was the Battalion Chief of EMS while I was still serving in EMS. If I'm not mistaken, he was one of the first, if not one of the pioneers, as an EMT instructor in the Division of Fire. And everybody on the Division of Fire became an EMT and we did not have a large number of instructors. So he was kind of a pioneer of his time. Our condolences to his family. Thank you. Any other comments? I will add my voice to those who have spoken. I think anytime we lose a member who has served the public so well, it causes us all to think about how important that person was to our community. So I send my condolences to his family. And that brings us to subcommittees. I do not see Tommy Puckett in the room and he has two of these. Does anyone on the committee, subcommittee? There's not been any movement on any of the subcommittees because Trey is on the other one. I think Tommy will be back in March so hopefully we'll have some updates then. Okay. Is there any additional information before we go back to our patiently waiting folks for the reports? Anything else? I will say, I'm sorry Trey is not here to hear it, but he and his ladder company were honored Saturday night at the fire banquet. And I thought that was very special. Mayor, I do have a couple of things, but I was going to save it until the end of the meeting unless you'd prefer I go now. The end of the meeting or now, if it's... Okay. Last month I mentioned the Social Security Fairness Bill did pass, was signed by the President. There is no timeline for when those payouts or increases in your payment will begin. Social Security Administration is down significantly in numbers and now we've added another job to them so it will take a while. Unfortunately a lot of the people that are affected by this are senior citizens and may not survive until those benefits change. So we hope that they can get this done. The other thing I'd like to mention is, and if Chief Wells has not already, February is the month in which Chuck Williams and Brenda Cowan both passed away. There will be a talk by retired Chief Bob Hendricks at Halligan's on the 16th, is it Chief? Halligan's is down in the Manchester district, owned by a retired Lexington firefighter, and that's at 630 and he's going to talk about their two deaths. The other thing I'd like to mention is that there's a current House Bill up, House Bill 146, that refers to increasing the dollar amount of pensions that are excluded from state taxes. It's currently at 31K and this bill is to increase it to 41K. So unless you're out on a disability pension here, you are paying state taxes so this affects a significant number of our people. If I'm allowed to make a motion at this time, that bill is in the House Appropriations Committee right now and fire retiree Mark Hart is a state representative on that committee. I would like to make a motion that this board send a letter to the House Appropriations Committee expressing our support for House Bill 146 as it would affect so many of our retirees. Is there a second? I'll second. Okay, Chief Wells seconds. I have not read the bill. Has everybody here read the bill? So I am always hesitant, since I'm over in Frankfort, a fair amount to say yes to this if I haven't read it and that's just my own personal opinion on it so I will probably either abstain or vote no just because I haven't seen it. Any comments to the motion? Mayor, is there a way in which the motion might be amended so that if the board collectively were to agree with the wording that we could allow this to happen? I'm going to look at Dave Barbary, who's our legal eagle, to tell us how that might work. Sure, you just make it contingent upon that condition that you're talking about? I'll send you all a copy of the bill today, so you'll have it. Okay, that would be helpful. I just don't want this to wait another month. A month in a committee in a short session means it's going nowhere. It'll be gone. That's right. So I think the proper wording then would be to allow this to happen. So I think the proper wording then would be contingent upon everyone reading it and saying they had read it or something. How would you word that, Mr. Barbary? I don't think there's a perfect way to do it, so I think what you're saying is good enough. So I think, Susan, you would need to be the person to collect that. Dave can send it to me. I can forward it out to all the board members. And once the board members read it, respond back to me that they're in favor of it or not in favor, then we can proceed. I mean, I don't know any other way of doing it. A majority of the board approving? Yes, contingent upon the majority of the board. Would we need a deadline for that since it's such a short session? I would give them until, what, Monday? I mean, if Dave gives it to me today, which we should not have a problem, then would that give everybody enough time to read it by Monday? Any other comments? Okay. All right. We'll take a vote then. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed? All right. That motion passes. Thank you. All right. If there's nothing else, we'll move on to yes, I'm sorry. Sorry. Very quickly, just to follow up on an announcement that Rock made, Wednesday the 19th is the gathering to remember those that we've lost in February. And I believe it's about 630 p.m. Okay. Thank you. So thank you for that. All right. All right. I think we're ready to move forward. And first we have our folks from Bailey Gifford and Ian Campbell and Kelly Cameron. And it looks like, Kelly, you're going to kick it off. Yes, thank you. Welcome. Thanks very much. So firstly, thank you all very much for inviting us along today. We're delighted to be here and glad that we brought the weather with us, it seems. Ian Campbell is an investment manager, chair of your Bailey Gifford International All Cap Investment Team and also a partner at the firm. And I'm Kelly Cameron. I'm a relationship director working with our North American clients. And although it's the first time I've had the pleasure to present to you all as a board today, I have had the pleasure of working with Chad and more recently Erin and Ashley over the past decade of our relationship. I'd like to just say we really value that relationship and that you are an important client of ours. Today we plan to share with you a reminder on Bailey Gifford as a firm, our philosophy and process, and crucially we want to discuss our underperformance and why we believe that we can once again deliver strong returns for you from here. If you have any questions, please do feel free to interrupt as we go through the presentation, but of course we'll also pause for questions at the end. Before we get into the firm, the team and the portfolio, I'd like to just acknowledge up front that our long-term delivered returns have quite frankly not been good enough. Our returns over the past four calendar years have been particularly disappointing and those years have resulted in a change as we were previously delivering on our long-term objective of outperformance over the benchmark over five-year rolling periods, but since that period we are now not. We recognise that this means that we've put you in a bit of a difficult position, however, as we'll discuss in more detail, we really strongly believe that we're very well placed both as a firm and also with your portfolio to get back to delivering outperformance for you. We plan to share with you today why you should have confidence that we can do this for you. We have made some enhancements to our process, which Ian will get into covering, but the key thing for us to do now is to really hold our discipline and to stick to our proven investment philosophy, which has served our clients at Baillie Gifford so well over the past century. You hired us to select an active portfolio of the very best international growth ideas and we haven't seen dislocation in markets like we have over the past four years and we continue to do so today for a long time. We therefore believe that there are key themes in your portfolio that are set to deliver growth and that these themes are misunderstood by the market today. We also think that the current valuations of these businesses do not reflect potential future success. What this means to us is that your portfolio is actually a good buying opportunity. All the market signals are that we should see share prices start to turn back in our favour and most crucially, we're confident that the portfolio companies will deliver performance again because of the excellent operational results that we are seeing them deliver. History shows that ultimately, high quality businesses that can deliver strong operational performance see their share prices rewarded over the long term and Ian will shortly get into the detail of the themes that we're excited about in your portfolio that we feel are absolutely poised to deliver on this. So with those opening remarks, I was going to turn to page three. Since 1908, the firm has always operated as an Edinburgh-based, independent and unlimited liability partnership. This is a fairly unique structure in our industry today but we have and will... Sorry. I hate to interrupt, but could you show that on the slides for the people watching at home? That means sorry. Is that okay? Of course. Apologies. Thank you so much. Thank you. You're doing excellent, it's just they need to see it at home as well. Apologies, I didn't know that that was there. I'll start again with the firm slide. So since 1908, the firm has always operated as an Edinburgh-based, independent and unlimited liability partnership. This is a fairly unique structure in terms of our industry but we will continue to retain this structure because of the stability and alignment that it offers both us and our clients. Being a private partnership enables us to focus on being truly long-term in everything that we do. It means we're not focused on quarterly results for external shareholders but instead on long-term successful investment for our clients. Our success is directly tied to yours. I'll pause here for questions before I hand over to Ian who will then get into our philosophy and process, the team and the portfolio. Are there questions? Go right ahead. Thank you, Kelly, and thank you all for having us here to present. If I move on to the next. Sorry, is this one? So I was going to begin by running through a quick reminder of what we do for you, our philosophy and our process and then I'll go into recent performance and the portfolio. So as a reminder, there are three hallmarks to our philosophy. Firstly, we are growth investors. It is a fact that companies that grow their earnings and cash flows at above average rates over long periods of time deliver the highest share price performance. So let me draw your attention to the graph on the left-hand side of this page here which shows that there is a strong correlation between companies that generate earnings growth and companies that deliver the strong share price performance. So the bar on the right-hand side of that left-hand side chart there shows where the highest share price performance comes from. Our task as investors on your behalf is to identify those companies that sit in that right-hand bar on this graph and invest your funds in them. The second plank of our philosophy is that we are bottom-up stock pickers. Now that means that we aim to identify those higher growth companies by carrying out our own analysis on individual businesses. So we have over 100 investors at Baillie Gifford involved in this task. And this chart in the centre shows the evidence of our bottom-up driven portfolio approach. It results in a portfolio that is different from the benchmark we are trying to beat with an overlap of less than 20%. And the third component of our philosophy is that we are long-term. We believe that financial markets are inefficient and tend towards a short-term view. We believe this creates opportunities for those who are prepared to take a long-term view and this is the edge we have when we try and beat the benchmark on your behalf. And that third point is the most important. We are long-term in everything we do. That extends to how we analyse companies, how long we hold our companies to give them time to grow and compound, and indeed how we invest in our own business and our own people consistently over many years. And the graph on the right-hand side again shows that we do indeed hold our positions for an average of five years plus, consistent with that long-term approach to business investment. So we are long-term, bottom-up growth investors. And we do this because we think this is a philosophy and approach that best positions us to do a good job for you and our clients. And we think that that point about our partnership ownership structure is really important. It's a really important foundation to allow us to take a long-term approach and put our philosophy into practice. As Kelly said, we don't need to keep external shareholders happy. We don't need to meet profit targets for some financial conglomerate CEO. The only people we need to keep happy are our clients. Moving on to page five, I won't go into too much detail in the interests of time on our process, but the key thing is that our strategy is run by experienced people who are closely involved with the research teams who do that all-important company research that's at the very heart of our process. I'm the chairman of this group. I've been at Baillie Gifford since 2004, and I began my career in the industry in 2000. The decision makers for this strategy are the six individuals you see at the top of this page. All of them are senior investors at Baillie Gifford with long experience in the markets and complementary expertise in the different regions in which we invest for you. Moving on to page six, I want to address this key topic of performance. This is the output that you and we care about, and I want to be very clear, as Kelly said, that performance for your portfolio in recent years has not been good enough, and we need to turn this around for you. The table at the top of this page lays out what your fund has done relative to the benchmark in each year that we have been managing it for you. So the top line is what your fund achieved, and I would highlight this as performance after fees. The second line is the benchmark that we are trying to beat for you, and the bottom line is the difference in each year. So you can see a picture as you go from left to right where the first six years of our working together, the years of outperformance outweighed the years in which we trailed the benchmark. In 2020, we can see an extremely good year with the portfolio outperforming by 20 percentage points, and as a reminder, we aim to beat the benchmark by two percentage points over ruling five-year periods. But what followed since 2020 have been four very weak years. So let me explain what's going on here. Firstly, as investors who prioritise growth, the lower interest rate environment and consumer activity in those years from 2014 to 2020 were very good for your portfolio. But as inflation built and then quickened with the invasion of Ukraine, interest rates went up, growth suffered, and your holdings also unfortunately suffered. The sorts of areas where we had less exposure for you, such as low growth, domestic-focused banks, materials companies such as mining companies, then did very well in this latter period when inflation overshot expectations. So your portfolio had this double whammy of growth businesses slowing down while banks and materials companies did very well, and that made it very difficult for the portfolio to beat the benchmark in those years. Now I'm not going to blame it all on the external environment. There are definite lessons for us to learn from this experience. We should have trimmed some of our holdings in some of the online businesses and healthcare businesses which were supercharged by Covid. We should have trimmed those more earlier. And we should have broadened out the types of businesses that we were bringing into the portfolio again during that Covid period, in that latter stage of the cycle. So we've tried to take lessons from this. We've introduced some enhancements to our process. We've added more resource to the strategy. We've increased our interaction and our regular interactions with our risk team. And I, along with one of the other decision makers, have set up a dedicated central desk for this strategy to ensure that we're doing everything we can to learn from these lessons and deliver on the enhancements and, all importantly, turn performance around. But what has not changed is our philosophy. We still absolutely believe in the potential to deliver outperformance by being long-term, bottom-up stock pickers. Consistency in this approach is absolutely key. The temptation always at the bottom of the cycle is to change one's philosophy to what is in vogue and to try and chase whatever is doing well. We've seen it many times in the markets that investors give up on their philosophy at the point of maximum pain and end up missing out on the recovery. So it's really important that we learn lessons and make enhancements to our process but that we are resolute in our overarching philosophy, which we still absolutely believe in. Talking of the long-term, I would draw your attention to the second chart on this page. This chart zooms out and shows the performance of the strategy dating back to its inception in 1989 when it was launched by Bailey Gifford. So you employed us in 2014, so two-thirds of the way through this process. I would highlight the orange line versus the purple line. The orange line on this chart is the performance of the strategy. The purple is the performance of the benchmark that we try to beat. And you can see that over the long term there have been ups and downs but the strategy has added value for clients over the long term. Looking at it a different way, the blue bars on this chart show five-year periods of rolling performance. And again, as you can see, there have been cycles. So I mentioned I joined Bailey Gifford in 2004. I became a decision-maker on this strategy in 2010. And as you can see from the blue charts, that was a time when we had just come through a similar period of challenging performance. But what followed was a decade of outperformance. And I firmly believe when I look at the team that we have and the portfolio that we have, we are in a similar place now. Markets have cycles, managers, performance also has cycles. And I see us coming through this one just as we came through the last one. I'm optimistic that we will build the performance track record back up again just as we have done in the past. I want to spend the next five to ten minutes talking about the portfolio that we've built on your behalf and why we're optimistic about it. Now it's impossible to go through the case for every single one of the 70 holdings that we have in your portfolio. So I'm going to use three different lenses to look at the portfolio and give a good understanding to you of what is held there. So if I start with page eight, here we've set out some key statistics of the portfolio as a whole versus the benchmark that we are aiming to beat. On average, starting from the left, the portfolio is made up of companies that have delivered higher earnings growth. And our modelling suggests that this will continue. We expect our portfolio earnings to continue to grow at over double the average market rate. And I would remind you of that chart I began the presentation with showing that faster growing companies deliver better share price performance. We are still going after those type of companies. The second graph moving to the right is a measure of business quality or profitability. This is important because growth is only valuable if it is profitable and cash generative. Our companies generate higher returns on capital and they can reinvest and grow as a result. The third graph looks at performance debt levels, which is one important mark of business resilience. And again, our holdings are on average less indebted than the benchmark. And the fourth and final chart looks at valuation. And once again, when it comes to valuation, our businesses are attractive relative to the benchmark. We are paying less for each dollar of growth that we hold. So yes, performance has been weak in recent years, but we think prices have now overshot. And on the basis of this high-level statistical lens, we think your portfolio is poised for outperformance. Moving on to a second way of cutting the portfolio. Here we are looking at specific clusters of industry exposure that we hold on your behalf. So let me run through these, again going from left to right. The first cluster is internet platforms. There's about 10 to 15% of your portfolio in what can be broadly defined as internet platforms. The example we're holding up there is Spotify, the music streaming business. This is an area of structural growth as our lives increasingly move online. As a cluster, these businesses performed very well during the COVID period when we were more active online than before. But there followed a period when they derated and became very weak. But over the last year, they've turned a corner again and have started delivering really impressive profit growth as they've absorbed some of the investments they made during that COVID period. Spotify shares were up over 70% last year. And I think I see this cluster as a leading indicator for what will happen in some other sectors as the cycle turns in our favour. Moving to the right, the second sector I want to highlight is industrial spending. We have around 23% of your portfolio in industrials. It's an area where there are some very attractive businesses in Europe, in Japan, and broadly in the international universe. And where technology is a long-term tailwind. But this is an area that has been difficult because of inflation and geopolitical uncertainty. And it's also had to go through a long process of working through the inventories that were built up when supply chains ground to a halt during COVID. As the environment now normalises, we think these industrial businesses will once again start to deliver growth. And as they always do, share prices will follow growth. The third cluster I would highlight is what we see as broadly exposed to the emerging markets consumer. We have big holdings in luxury companies such as LVMH, which has been very successful at selling French luxury handbags and Hennessy cognac to the new middle class consumers in Asia. Now, we know that the China consumer has been weak because of problems in their property market. However, we still believe in the long-term growth of the middle class in emerging markets. We've been adding to our exposure here. And while it's early days, the luxury goods companies area has already started to perform better this year. And the final cluster I would highlight is Japan. Now, this has been an area which has been a real drag on performance. In Japan, the economy is in a very different place. The currency has been very weak. And there's been a regulatory push for companies to manage their businesses more fairly and catch up on Western standards of management. In simple terms, this means that over the last three years, we've had a very strange situation where in Japan, bad companies have had good share price performance. So, it's been a very strange year. And it's been years that have not been suited for investors who invest in strong businesses that are already well managed. Now, again, this situation can't last forever. And mostly, it seems to have run its course. The currency in Japan is starting to strengthen. And we expect normality to resume and companies that consistently deliver growth to resume leading the market once again. So, to sum up on this page, there are specific areas of the portfolio that have held us back. These are starting to turn. In the case of the Internet platforms, that's been running for a year now. And they're performing well. And in some other key areas, we expect to hit inflection points soon. We're always trying to allocate more funds to areas of the market which we see as being like a coiled spring. And if anything, we see more of these in the portfolio than usual at the current time. Mr. Campbell, before you go on, and there may be some other questions, you mentioned on Internet and industrial the percentage of our portfolio. What is the emerging markets and the Japan percentages for us? So, for you, we have about 13% of the portfolio in emerging markets listed companies. But when we're thinking about emerging markets exposure, we would also include developed market companies that sell into China. So, for example, I mentioned LVMH. It's a French company, but 30% to 50% of its sales are to Chinese consumers. So, when we add all that together, we've got about 15% in emerging market consumer exposed companies. In Japan, it's about the same. We're at 13% to 14% of the portfolio invested in Japanese companies. And then back on the industrial, with all the uncertainty at this point about tariffs, what are your thoughts on that particular sector and the impact of tariffs? Yeah, it's a very important question for industrials and for all sorts of companies with long supply chains. And it's something that we factor into our discussions and analysis for every company we look at. It's impossible for us to predict exactly what course tariffs are going to take. And we don't aim to set up the portfolio based on a particular prediction about tariff levels in one particular company. These things are going to change a lot. So, our approach instead is to invest in high-quality businesses that are nimble and will be able to adapt. Now, let me give you an example. We hold a company called Tektronik. We have for many years. It's a power tool maker company. It owns the Milwaukee brand. It owns the Ryobi brand that you will see in Home Depot. It used to make over 50% of its tools in China. But over the course of the last six years, really since tariff wars started to be an issue, it's adjusted that. So, it's now manufacturing more in America, more in Vietnam, and it's reduced its China manufacturing to less than 30%. So, it's those kind of companies that can adapt, be nimble, take market share that we try and invest in rather than avoiding any kind of companies that import or export at all. Okay. Before you go on, does anyone else have any questions at this point? Yes, Commissioner Armstrong. Looking at the documentation, it looks like that you all have approximately $66, $67 million of our portfolio. Just to give an understanding to everyone at home, what's your, I think it's called your AUM total? And I don't expect an exact number from you, but what is it? So, within this strategy, we have AUM of about $10 billion. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other questions at this point? All right. Thank you. Thank you. So, to finish up on page 10, the third and final way of looking at the portfolio, these are all 70 holdings that we hold on your behalf, and what we've done here is we've arranged them according to their growth type. So, you can see that starting again from the left, we have about a third of your portfolio in what we call compounders. These are the sort of solid businesses that we expect to deliver year-on-year consistent growth. Then moving to the right, we have about another third in holdings which have similar business strength, but where end markets are a bit more cyclical. Then in the third column, about 16% of the portfolio in more rapidly growing businesses, where we expect sales growth to be well over 10% each year for the next five years. And these businesses typically have more disruptive qualities to them. And then finally, we have about the same amount in what we call capital allocators, which are businesses that drive more of their growth from acquisition activity than from organic growth. So, what I'm trying to show here is that we have a blend in your portfolio of diversified types of growth company with exposure to several long-term secular tailwinds. Page 11, I want to conclude firstly by thanking you for your patience. We're very aware that the performance we have delivered over the last few years has not been what you expected. But I also want to reassure you that as a firm and as a strategy, we are working hard on turning this around. We've added resource to the strategy. We've spent a long time seeking to learn the lessons of the last few years, and we have made concrete changes to enhance our processes and our risk management. But we've also focused on consistency in our philosophy and the core task of looking for long-term quality growth businesses. That continues to be central to what we do. In terms of what's in the portfolio, we have a high degree of confidence and we see really significant opportunities. I ran through a few clusters. In the case of the internet platforms, that cluster is already working. It's already outperforming the index. In other areas such as industrial capex, the emerging middle class and Japan, we believe the tide is turning, and we've been offered fantastically valued opportunities now. There is a legendary American investor of the 1940s called Shelby Column Davis who said lots of perceptive things. One of them was, you make most of your money in a bear market. You just don't realise it at the time. And frankly, when I and my fellow portfolio managers at Bailey Gifford look at the portfolio, we feel the same. There is significant potential in a number of areas that have been out of favour now for some years. But cycles are a feature of markets and a feature of investment performance, as you saw in that chart of long-term returns that I showed earlier. And as this cycle turns again, we think we're well-placed to redeem ourselves and deliver several strong years of performance to you. I'll finish there and happy to take any questions you have. All right, thank you very much. Are there questions? Yes, Commissioner Armstrong. Thank you very much for the presentation, both of you. My first question is, and I think, I don't want to misquote you, but you said turnaround. We hope to make a turnaround. We've learned from the last couple of years, whenever I'm saying we, we're talking about you, obviously, that you've made some changes in your investment strategy and whatnot. What do you perceive timeline for a turnaround? I know that's probably not a fair question, but it's a question. Well, it's very hard to put a specific date on it. What we can see is huge potential and undervaluation. I mean, perhaps one way to do it is to think about those clusters. That's not 100% of the portfolio. There are other holdings we have in diversified areas that are not in that area. But if I'm thinking about those, the Internet platforms, as I said, have already turned around. They started delivering profit growth. The market is reacting to that. And they, as a group, really outperformed very strongly last year. So that's working. That's turned around. If I'm thinking about Japan, the yen fell to 161 to the dollar at its lowest point. So far this year, we've seen another interest rate rise from the Bank of Japan. The yen is strengthening. Some of those weak companies that can only really prosper because they had a very weak currency, some of those are falling away. The auto companies are underperforming. And we're starting to see again already this year outperformance for quality growth companies in Japan. So it's early days, but so far this year is looking good for Japan. And all the signs are that in Japan we're going to see more interest rate rises. In other markets, it's more likely to be the opposite direction. So this year is looking like a good setup for Japan. And as I said, valuations are very promising. Industrials is a much broader sector, so it's difficult to generalise. The bit of industrials that's doing really well is the AI-exposed industrials, so companies like TSMC, Tokyo Electron, ASML, the companies that make the hardware that we then use to run GPT and other models. Other areas of industrial are much weaker, so chemicals companies, gases companies, heavier industry-exposed companies. That turnaround hasn't yet come. So it's going to be more of a staggered process. But, again, there are bits that are turning, and the setup is attractive valuations. And then the emerging market consumer. It's not just China, but China is really important. And, again, I'm very confident in the long term. We've got 3.5 billion middle-class consumers in the world now. In 2030 it's going to be 5.5 billion. So there's a big opportunity there, not only in the number of consumers, but each consumer spends more when they emerge into the middle class. Will China stimulate this quarter or next quarter? That's not the kind of thing that we're going to predict accurately. But, again, we can see strong branded businesses at attractive valuations, and the prospects are looking good. So, look, I'm looking at the portfolio I'm very optimistic about this year, and there's bits that are already really starting to work. Yes, and I believe also Commissioner Hensley will have a question before she leaves. I'm sorry. She has a minute. I do actually have a question, and it's not actually for you, but I apologize. I'm going to talk about you while you're sitting here. It's actually for John and Jim because you all brought Bailey Gifford to the board, and you all regularly bring us when you have concerns or you have recommendations that we might want to look at something or might want to make a change, and you have not brought that to us at this point. So I'm just kind of wondering because my purview on Bailey Gifford is somewhat short. I came in the 20% year, and it was the darling, and then we've kind of seen the kind of fall off since then. But, you know, I know that we do heavily rely on your recommendation, and I think that you all coming to present was something that was recommended that you do talk to us because several of us are somewhat new in the perspective, but also we do rely on the recommendations from you guys. And so I would appreciate some perspective on your thoughts as far as what they present as far as our portfolio as a whole, and then your thoughts as well. So I apologize for having them talk about you in front of you, but that's just kind of my question. Certainly. And thank you for the question. Good morning, all. So our position on Bailey Gifford is that we look at the firm in terms of stability, their process, and while they've talked about changes in order to turn it around, we would be gravely concerned if we saw a revolutionary, not an evolutionary change. So that said, some of the items that Ian spoke to in terms of their portfolio construction group and interaction and communication within, certainly we applaud those efforts. To keep in context, you know, what we're most disappointed about Bailey Gifford is the persistency of the underperformance. So certainly, you know, we would expect that, you know, for calendar years there's been a lot of volatility. Certainly you've got an increasing rate environment that's been a headwind for their particular strategy. They have a growth style of investment where, you know, it has taken its toll, but we're not blind to the fact that they didn't forget how to manage money and to select securities. You don't develop a track record the way they did to generate the returns. And again, you know, yes, they're being benchmarked against the EFA. They are not benchmark driven. They're bottom-up stock pickers. So we're not at all surprised by a pretty significant degree of dispersion that you're going to see their performance versus the benchmark. But four calendar years of back-to-back underperformance is disappointing. But we have seen, as you look at the very long track record, there have been periods where this type of underperformance has taken place. So where do we go from here? I guess we like to put it in the context of process. And we've, you know, met about to discuss an asset liability study which basically tells us how much should we invest in international. And then the next component of that is an international equity structure study. So not only looking at Bailey Gifford and their growth orientation, how that blends with your emerging markets strategy, your Acadian manager as well to kind of take a look at a holistic approach. And if it lends itself to a mitigation of some of the growth bias that's present in the Bailey Gifford portfolio, we're prepared to do that. But in terms of a wholesale recommendation upon what we saw, we think that is not the most prudent strategy for your particular program at this time. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, thank you, Commissioner Hensley. Now, Commissioner Armstrong. Again, not to put you on the spot, but that's really what you're here for, I guess. But what I would say is we discussed the four years of underperformance and everything, and we all understand how the stock markets work and investments work and things like that, but this change that you're doing, how long will it take for you to realize whether it's the right change or not? Well, perhaps just to outline what the changes are. I mean, this is about making sure that we learn the lessons from what was this period of very abrupt and rapid shift in market cycle and what was in style. If I look back at that period, what do I wish we could have done better? One is I wish that we'd reacted a bit more quickly to a very steep run-up in valuations. Now, look, we were taking the top off some names. We were reducing names that had got very expensive, but in hindsight, we should have done that faster. So that's one thing I look back on. It keeps me up at night. And the second is the breadth of growth opportunities that we were bringing into the portfolio. There was a narrowing of ideas during that COVID period. Many more of those online healthcare-type businesses were coming into the portfolio, and there wasn't perhaps the breadth that we should have had. There are high-quality growth materials, commodity-exposed businesses. We should have had more of them in the portfolio. So what do we do to learn from that lesson? Well, we've gone back to basics on our risk pack. We've put more reporting on individual stock-level valuations, portfolio valuations, the idea being that we'll get the nudge to react more aggressively if we do see a very strange period of valuation run-ups again. So that's one learning. So that's just giving us the material to react in the future to what was an unusual period. On the breadth, we've gone back and we've instituted a process of looking at our top two sectors where we hold the most and our bottom two sectors where we hold the least, and we have a formal review each quarter of one of those. And again, the idea here is to say, you've got lots in that sector. Do you really like all of them so much, or are you just repeating a name again and again? And likewise, for the sectors where we have very little, this would be a good diversifier. Is there really nothing that satisfies our quality and growth hurdles here? So pushing ourselves to make sure that that breadth is there. Now, your question is, when do you know if that's worked? Well, I can look at the stats of the portfolio and look at our sector overweight and underweight. They have come down a bit. So we're no longer taking such big sector bets. We're taking big bets on companies that we genuinely believe in, but those are spread more broadly. Another thing that we look at would be volatility, which would tend to be higher if you had very skewed positions. That is coming down. The tracking error for the portfolio, which is a measure of volatility, has come down. So I can look at those stats and say, the process we've introduced has broadened out the growth opportunities here. We haven't had a similar period of dislocation for me to work out whether the nudges on valuation are working yet. So who knows when that will happen again, but the stock market does have these big ups and big downs occasionally, and we'll know then whether we've done the right thing. But I think these are very sensible and there should be a definite enhancement to the process. I appreciate the answer. Thank you. Other questions? Yes, Officer Jennings. Thank you, Mr. Campbell. I have perhaps an oversimplification question for you, but there's a chart on page seven, the performance chart, about the NAV investment returns from December 31st, or through December 31st of last year. My question is, if I'm reading it correctly, since the inception of our engagement, our fund has been trailing behind the index by 1.38%. Is that correct? That's correct, yes. So I guess my question is, I certainly understand the 1,000-foot view of the stock market. I certainly do not understand the minutia of what goes into it. You're talking about long-term. What does long-term mean? Well, what we say to clients is that we aim to deliver outperformance over ruling five-year periods. So we don't try and outperform every year because we think the amount of outperformance would have to be lower. So we're aiming to outperform by two percentage points per year, measured over five-year ruling periods. Now, as you point out here, we haven't done that, and that's on us to turn that around and deliver that into the future, but that would be our measure of long-term, would be a five-year period. Okay, thank you. Okay, all right, other questions? Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Campbell and Ms. Cameron, thank you so much for coming. Based on your accent, I'm gonna say you've traveled some distance to get here, and your accents are lovely, by the way, and I hope if I get to Scotland that somebody there says that I have a lovely accent, but I don't think I do. Anyway, I'm just a dumb old retired fireman, but I've been on this board for a few years, and Bailey Gifford's name has come up multiple times, and I'm sorry to say it hasn't always been in the most positive light. Now, it appears that you guys have almost 7% of our pension fund, and the chart I'm looking at is last quarter, last year, last three, last five, last 10. It does not show the highs that are in your chart, which I was glad to see, but you still have a lot of red numbers, and over the last 10, you're still underperforming based on the baseline. I was curious if you can explain to me, like I'm a six-year-old, why I should continue to show trust in you guys when over 10 years, it doesn't appear that you've done so well for us, and I apologize if I'm blunt. It's a very fair question, and for the record, I think your accent is very lovely as well. Look, I mean, that's why we're here talking to you, and that's why it's really important that we get out and see our clients at times like this. We've not delivered. You're absolutely right. We should have delivered what we said over long periods of time, and it's not happened. The simple reason as to why I think now is a time to carry on holding the portfolio is because of this point around cycles. I think the darkest hour is there before dawn, some people say, that we have been through a very unusual post-COVID period when we've got some things wrong, but also the environment has been very against the growth style of investing. At the bottom is the time that we actually get excited about the future. We think there are an incredible range of opportunities, and that holding on now, you will see that recovery, and while we can never predict it, I would expect a number of years when we overshoot performance again, so I would say this feels a lot to me like that period in 2010 when we had not delivered to our clients. We were out having meetings like this, explaining to them what has happened, and that followed a great decade, and this feels very similar, but it's one where completely you have to take that on trust and hopefully some of the stats I've given you around what's in the portfolio, what we're excited about, give you some confidence in that vision of ours. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? I have just one. I want to go back to your comments about Japan and our exposure there, and I did hear what you said about the yen and the changes that we've gone through, and if I recall correctly, Japan is one of the highest countries in the world in terms of dwindling workforce. They're an aging population more than any other country, and so I'm concerned about that because the workforce is what drives the businesses over there, and so I want your thoughts on that long-term, whether you know something we don't know. You're absolutely right. There are major headwinds in the demographics of Japan. There's headwinds for all developed markets in terms of the demographic shape, but in Japan, Korea, that's particularly extreme, but when we invest in Japan, we're not investing in the Japanese economy as a whole. We're selecting specific companies that have the ability to grow, and often those are companies which have actively gone out of Japan and are selling into international global markets that are competing with world-class companies elsewhere, so if I take an example from the portfolio, a company like SMC. It's an industrial equipment company. It makes pneumatic control components. The US is a major market for it, 30 to 40% of its business, so it's a global company. It happens to be listed in Japan, but what is gonna drive its growth is the automation of manufacturing which uses pneumatic components to automate a factory and make it more efficient, so that's the kind of company we're investing in. They tend to be in niches that are growing. They tend to be businesses that dominate those niches and are profitable, and they tend to be very international, and that's been completely the wrong place to be in Japan for the last three years because we've had this sort of dead cat bounce of low-growth domestic banks, insurance companies, auto companies which have got a difficult future. They've all done well. We're not in any of them, but over the next five years, we expect those internationally exposed businesses that are genuinely great international businesses to once again prosper, and that's where we're focused in our investments. Okay, that helps me understand that better. Thank you. Well, if there are no other questions or comments, I want to thank both of you, Ms. Campbell and Ms. Cameron, Cameron and Campbell, and Mr. Campbell for being with us today, and I personally like your accents very much. Appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time and for having us here. Thank you. Enjoy some of our local cuisine while you're here. Thank you. Now, that brings us to Cowan, so we've got John Jackson and Jim O'Connor with us today. Welcome. Okay. Let's turn to the executive summary here, and let me just touch on a few of the themes that took place and provide an overview of the performance. I am, oh, I guess I will be forwarding these slides. There we go. Okay. Here we have, this is the summary slide, and lays out the current size of the portfolio, the periodic performance, and I'm gonna touch on what's been taking place in the market. I know that Ian talked about a number of themes that have taken place, headwinds, et cetera. Let me begin by opening it up and seeing if there are any more additional questions that you might have for us with respect to Bailey Gifford. Commissioner Armstrong. I do have a question, sir. Yes. And Mr. Daniels brought it up earlier, so approximately 7% of our portfolio is under their investment, right? Approximately, right? Is it? 6.85. Huh? 6.85. 6.85, then. Yep. While I appreciate what you said earlier, whenever Commissioner Hensley asked you the question, I guess my next question is, is if we were to continue on, do you still, your company, consider 7% to be accurate or appropriate, or is there a consideration to reduce that amount until they work through their issues? Yes and yes. I think the, I talked about the process. What does the structure analysis tell you? One is, okay, how much should, asset liability's gonna tell us how much should be invested in non-U.S. equities? Should we shrink the size of that overall allocation? The structure of that overall allocation, it's kind of a separate question, right? How much should be in Bailey Gifford? How much should be in Acadian? How much should be into Capital Trust? And it's that there is, so Bailey Gifford has a growth orientation, and growth certainly has been episodic overall, stronger, but when, you know, Ian talks about some of the companies that have been performing best are the poorer companies, little bit of an issue with that label, because we're talking about two types of investors thesis. One is growth, and the growth manager is paying up for securities that are the fastest growers. Their revenues are increasing. They're the darlings of the market. But there's a really strong reversion to the mean. So that's why, if you're a patient investor, and you have a less than a 20% turnover, and you're investing in growth stocks, when they start to turn, you ideally would want to be able to get out of those names. That's why overall growth managers tend to exercise greater levels of turnover. Value managers are investing in cheap stocks. And whether you call them lower quality, or less attractive, they're on sale, and they're on sale for a reason. And the value investors saying, hey, they're cheap, we're gonna buy them, because we think whatever it is that the market doesn't like about those securities can be remedied. It's a lawsuit. It's leadership. It's revising the product line. But they're on sale. So the question is, is it cheap for a reason, it's gonna stay that way? Or is there an opportunity to buy when it's on sale, and experience that? Now, the biggest group of value stocks in the indices are financials. The biggest group in growth indices are information technology stocks. And we know how AI, anything related to it, has performed well. But what we've seen is a change in leadership over the last year, a great deal of volatility, and certainly not helping their cases when these value stocks are performing better. That's why if we were gonna do a structure study, and we will, that we might mitigate some of that growth bias, and get a little more value as a ballast to even that out a little bit more. So. So in layman's terms. Simple language is. Oh no, let me say in my layman's terms. We have three options whenever it comes to their company. Just stop using their services, reduce the amount of the allocation we have, or hold. Of course we could increase, but I would be firmly against that right now. Right. Not to put you on the spot, but whenever we talk about 7% of our allocation, that's a significant amount when it should be more, just for the simple fact that for the last four years they've really taken it on the chin. But there's also a thought process that you don't want to necessarily get out of it, because if they found the golden ticket, you don't want to miss out too. That's the part of the market, and that's the part of investments. I guess, would you eventually make a formal recommendation to us with those three different possibilities? Would you do that, or would that be an inappropriate ask? No, that's exactly what the outcome of the structure study would do. It would tell you, should the managers or the current structure stay in place, and should the pieces be retained, or should they be reduced or eliminated entirely? Okay. Yes. Do we need to make a motion to have that done, or will you do that independently on our request, or what's the process, I guess? We can independently do that. I guess what our outstanding portion is, like you talked about, well, they have over 6%, right? That's percent of total. So the asset liability's gonna say, should that overall bucket be reduced, right? And we've already done phase one, so I guess my ask would be, let's complete that, which is in process. Okay. Figure out the overall allocation, and we can initiate the international equity structure right now. As a side note to that, if the recommendation came back to either terminate the agreement, or terminate the relationship, or to reduce, which I think is probably more likely, but based on some of the comments you've made today about at least having some belief that they may be turning the ship around, would that recommendation also include where or who we should invest that extra percentage in? If we are gonna terminate, or even mitigate, and hire a complimentary manager, that is a separate exercise. That's doing a search for who would that be. At Cal, we don't have a list of, okay, you want an international value manager? Here it is. We tend to do searches de novo based on who your current managers are, what's the best compliment, look at our universes, and come back to you with like three or four. So we need to wait, I'm sorry, Mayor, but we need to wait until the first study is done, and then we can talk about what we would do based on those recommendations. Is that what you're saying? That's correct. Thank you very much, Mayor. I think it's a really good point. I'm, if I might weigh in just quickly, we have other funds that have lost money, and if you look at this, I know that Erin has had multiple conversations with Bailey Gifford, Commissioner Hensley, who's our finance commissioner, and I would hope that as we look at this, we're not just picking out one who's lost money because we have others who have a larger part of our pension. So I want to be sure we're very careful about what we're doing here. And 7% of one that's 66 million, then you compare that with one that holds 96 million, and it is a greater, and also has been a loser. I don't mean that the way it sounds, but I think my perspective is I just want to be very careful about what we're doing here. So other questions before John goes on? Yes, Rob. Thank you, Mayor. Mr. Jackson, I apologize for jumping ahead, but I was looking at your chart earlier to discuss Bailey Gifford. And I am on page 16, and the far right-hand column says expense ratio. And Bailey Gifford is 0.64, which is the second highest. Could you explain to me what I'm looking at here? Are we paying, does that reflect what we pay them? It does. 64 basis points. Yeah, I can jump in here, maybe. Good morning, everyone. Hey, Jim. So what you're seeing there, Rock, is 64 basis points. So that's your annualized fee that you pay Bailey Gifford. So those are the investment management fees, the operating fees, the all-in costs. So yes, you are correct. That small number next to it, 81, that's the ranking of the fee relative to its peers. So we talk about performance. You want to be in the first percentile, right? That's the best. 100th is the worst. In fees, it's flipped. I know it would make it a little bit more confusing. So they are, so another way of looking at it is, at 64 basis points, correct. So we would surmise that that's a competitive fee for their peers. Thank you, and I apologize for jumping in. No, that's, and that's, you know, we would like all the percentiles and rankings to be, it is confusing when you're looking at performance, and small means better, and then when you're looking at the percentile ranking fees, it's exactly the opposite. But yeah, it's kind of ingrained, so. And I guess while we're here, I'm going to steal a little bit of Jim's thunder and say, you know, if you turn to page 11. Oh, I'm sorry, and I will turn to page 11. So here you see, you know, why do we highlight international equity? Because over the last three years, you see that international equity was down 3.4% versus the benchmark that was up 50 basis points or 0.5%. So that is a weakness in the portfolio, and it's driven essentially by two managers, the emerging markets, which is growth oriented, and Bailey Gifford. So from that standpoint, that's why we would say international equity structure would be the first thing to address. The other items, domestic equity in an environment where oftentimes it's not only the best performing, but over the last five years, it's up 13% versus its benchmark at 11.8. So we would say, okay, that's why that particular allocation is not as high a priority. And the managers overall have done a pretty good job. Real estate is another one that's underperformed, and we've addressed that issue with respect to J.P. Morgan. And then looking at real assets or looking at domestic fixed income, beating their benchmarks. So that's why it's not all bad. It's focused in on international equity would be the area that we would focus it on. Okay? All right, so let's, those are great questions. Let's see here, let's go back to, that's, does it only advance forward or go backwards? I've got it. You got it. Here we go. All right, sorry. Technically challenged here. Okay. So, so that kind of like, don't want to bury the lead, but okay, so what's been taking place in the markets? Again, I guess I would point out a lot of volatility. There's growth value leadership changes in 2024. The good news is that large cap U.S. equities have been driving the ship here. And we see the S&P 500 had another year where it exceeded 25%. So that's two years in a row where it has exceeded 25%. And if you think the long-term average of the S&P 500 is about 10, 10 and a half percent, it's pretty extraordinary. Now that's coming off a very difficult, again, if you look to 2022, where large cap equity in the S&P was down 18%. So again, the market is what it is. It will give you, that's why we have a diversification, a diversified basket of goods. The small caps, as measured by the Russell 2000, you see that was up 11 and a half percent. Nice absolute return, but trailing large caps by a significant margin. And the theme that took place in the S&P 500 is the magnificent seven stocks, right? So NVIDIA, Tesla, Microsoft, the tech names really driving the market. In the non-U.S. markets, you can see that they trailed the MSCI World Ex-U.S., so that's developed markets, international equities were up 4.7%. So well behind the U.S. markets. If you look over the last quarter, these developed market stocks were down 7%, and that's largely due to the fact that the dollar- I am sorry to interrupt, but we have lost our quorum if Brock is leaving the room. So if you don't mind tilting, Officer Jennings gets back. Okay, very good. Thank you. Okay. It's a tricky thing about that quorum. Yeah, sure. So right, non-U.S. stocks were up 4.7% for the year, and down 7%, and that's largely due to the strengthening dollar, right? Which was a 7% headwind for non-U.S. stocks. The Bloomberg aggregate, that's your fixed income benchmark, and it's pretty unusual that you'll see fixed income was down .33 for the five years. So again, in a rising interest rate environment, as rates go up, the value of your fixed income goes down, and we see that that's taken place over the quarter, and over the one-year period, at 1.25%. The 90-day T-bill, so you hear a lot of, gosh, I could just invest in a money market fund, and I would earn an excess of 5%. Agreed. But that is only so long as we have what we have called an inverted yield curve, where the short end of the curve is earning a lot, and then it comes down, and then it goes up, and that we've seen more of a normalization in the longer maturity securities, but it is a fact that over the last year, you would have earned about 5% in money markets. We do our capital market projections, these are 10-year outlooks, and suffice to say, over the 10-year period, we see that 90-day T-bill is gonna generate a return of about 3%. We see the return for the core fixed income at 4.75, so that's why we don't take everything and put it into money market, because we're long-term investors, and we see that you're gonna earn more by staying invested in core bonds. Real estate, again, this is a category that continues to be challenged. We do think that we are nearing the bottom, as we see that the returns over the last three years have been negative, and certainly that's the case for J.P. Morgan, our real estate manager. So that kind of covers the landscape. Page three is kind of a nice chart that shows you why we diversify. So you see the far-right columns in dark blue, large-cap equity, that's the S&P 500, up 25% in 24, up 26% in 23, and then if you look down to 22, down 18%, and that's where, in 2022, real estate had generated a 7.5% return. In 2021, it was more like 22. So again, what we've seen is best to have a mix of assets, a diversified basket, to kind of baffle the volatility. I'm gonna spend a moment just touching on growth and value, because I think it's relevant for what we just heard. Turning to page five, and we see that the Russell 1000 growth for the quarter was up 7%, Russell 1000 value is down 2%, so that's a 9% differential. So again, you're looking at the 1,000 largest stocks traded in the U.S. market, and you divide them between growth and value, you see that growth has done particularly well, largely on the back of the Magnificent Seven. If you look to the one-year period, you see that, again, the Russell 1000 growth was up 33%, value was up 14.4. Okay, so what you saw is huge outperformance by growth stocks in the U.S. versus value stocks. When you turn to non-U.S. stocks on page six, you see that that dispersion is not quite as strong, where we see the growth stocks, the IFA growth was only up 2%, and IFA value was 5.7. Keep in mind, Bailey Gifford is growth, right? So when you look at IFA overall, that is a headwind, not to the degree that they've underperformed, but it is a headwind. I'm gonna, fixed income, I think the story there is longer term fixed income securities were hit harder than shorter term in this period where interest rates increased. All eyes are on the Fed, what they're gonna do. They increased rates by 1%. I mean, they cut rates by 1% in 2024, and the message that they've given, and Powell has recently, as yesterday, say they're taking a pause in terms of cutting rates, which is stimulative. They went from looking at four increases prospecting for cuts for 2025, and now we're looking at, they're projecting maybe two cuts at 0.25% at the end of the year. So they're kind of, one, they wanna understand the implications of what tariffs might be implemented, if they're gonna be implemented at all. So they're taking a wait and see, and that's kind of what their position is at the current point. I think I'm gonna stop there and turn it over to Jim for the performance of the portfolio. Any questions? Are there any questions? Okay, thank you. Okay, great. Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone. Morning. I'm gonna keep things moving along here. Thanks for your patience. I know we've had a really fruitful discussion, and I'll try to bring us home here talking about the total fund portfolio. So we spent a lot of time kind of in the micro pages, looking at managers. Let's look at it at a more holistic level. And so this is, of course, performance ending at the end of the year. So why don't I start with, before we get to performance of the fund, why don't we look at the asset allocation of the fund? So on slide nine here that I'm showing, you can see that there was about, I'm sorry, 975 million in total assets. You have the actual weight in the middle of the page. Those are the actual asset allocation for the asset classes, and then you have the long-term targets right next to it. So you could see overweight in domestic equity at the end of the quarter, and those overweights were offset by international equity, real estate, and real assets. Turning to page 10, we call this our asset class cash flows page. I like to start on the right side of the page. Bottom right, you can see at the end of the third quarter, assets for the total fund were about 997 million. As John mentioned in his capital markets overview, the investment returns on a net basis were down about 15.6 million. So we had positive results in U.S. equity, negative results in non-U.S. equity, fixed income with the exception of high yield, and it kind of was a mixed bag with real estate up this quarter and real assets down, driven by commodities and REITs that both finished in the red. The net new investment columns, that captures flows coming in and out of the plan, and you can see on a net basis, about 6.8 million came out. The majority of that was sourced from U.S. equity, so Neuberger Berman and Dodging Cox were the source to pay benefits this quarter. The other fees that you see, I'm sorry, the other figures that you see are the investment management fees for those particular managers. And then for real estate, we've talked about this the last couple quarters, continuing to receive redemptions from J.P. Morgan, and so that is being swept out of the J.P. Morgan account right now and going to be sitting in the cash account. Any questions on this page? Questions? All right. Okay, moving along. I'm gonna skip page 11. John talked to it a bit and move to slide 12. I'll highlight some of the manager's performance this quarter in some pages later on in the deck, so with that, maybe just give a snapshot of the total fund performance this quarter and over the annualized period shown there. So for the last quarter, down about 1.5%, but did manage to outperform its target, which was down about 1.6%. The attribution for the quarter, an overweight to U.S. equities and a modest underweight to non-U.S. equities were some of the driving forces of the outperformance this quarter. Over the one-year period, really strong results up over 10% and ranking in the 39th percentile of Calen's public fund-sponsored database, and that 10.5% return outperformed its target as well, so outperformance over the last quarter and calendar year. Three-year, the fund was up about 1.55%, but trailed its policy target. From an attribution perspective, we've touched on this a little bit earlier, but the non-U.S. equity managers, so the active managers, Bailey Gifford and Capital Group, emerging markets growth underperformed as well as real estate. Over the five and 10-year periods, you could see results for the fund were up over 7% over both of those time periods and ranking near the median over the five-year period and in the top quartile appears the 20th percentile over the last 10 years, so pretty strong results over the intermediate and long-term, and then we also have a 25 years worth of history for the fund on the very far right, and you could see that the fund, total fund was up about 7.4%, outperforming its policy target by 100 basis points and ranking right near the top of Calen's peer group. Here's just another look at the performance on page 13. We plot the calendar years, and really the takeaway here is nine of the last 10 calendar years, the fund has outperformed its benchmark. Peer ranking has been a little bit mixed, but I would say by and large, in the top quartile or above the peer group median over all time periods, with the one exception being 2022. On 14, I'm just gonna touch on the highlights for this quarter in terms of performance for your underlying investment managers, so you have 12 investment managers, 11 of which are actively managed funds, so again, those are funds that are looking to outperform their benchmark, and then you have one passively managed strategy, which is the Northern Trust S&P 500, that's a full replication of the S&P index. So seven of your 11 active managers outperformed this quarter. In non-US equity, one of the stronger performing composites over the near term and long term, this quarter underperformed a bit, Dodge & Cox outperformed, Wild Jenison, which is the large cap growth manager, and Neuberger Berman underperformed. In small cap, I'll just note Neuberger Berman, you can see down about 3% this quarter, where the benchmark was about flat. It was what was characterized as more of a risk on quarter, so there was quite a bit of asset flow that came into the small cap space, propping up a lot of the lower quality non-earner names. In the index, and those are names that Neuberger Berman tends to avoid owning, so they did not keep up in what was a stronger, or at least a flat market in small cap. Moving to non-US, two of your three managers outperformed their benchmark, Akkadian and Capital Group both outperformed, driven by strong stock selection and overweights in IT for Akkadian, and in Capital Group's case, an outperformance due to a underweight to materials and strong selection in the consumer sectors. Bailey Gifford did underperform this quarter. I don't think we need to go into that too much more, we've talked about them at this point quite a bit. Any questions on equity performance before I shift to fixed income? Questions? No, go right ahead. Okay, great. Moving on to fixed income, as John mentioned, we had some rate hikes this quarter, so fixed income was down, generally speaking, so the Bloomberg Ag was down about 3%, but your composite, your three managers together, were down about 1.8%, so it was a little bit of a mixed bag here, two of the managers outperformed, one underperformed. Mackay is your high yield manager, this was up about .28%, so they invest in high yield bonds, so below investment grade credit, and although it does invest in higher yield bonds, this is a little bit higher quality portfolio than the index, and while they did outperform modestly, they did have an underweight to the lowest quality portion of the market, which actually had a really good, which had a really good quarter, so being underweight there actually cost them a bit, but again, this is higher quality portfolio, it always has been, and they're gonna continue to operate in that space. Moving to real estate, so this is J.P. Morgan, again, gonna be the manager in place here, we've identified a new manager, which is LaSalle Property Fund, as we, again, the plan here is to, as we continue to receive proceeds from J.P. Morgan, we're going to then methodically put those into the LaSalle Property Fund, but for the meantime, they're gonna certainly be managing close to, at this point, about 63 million in assets for the fund, and actually had a pretty strong quarter this time around, up about 1.7%, where the index was up about 1%, so strong sector, excuse me, strong selection within their holdings across really all the major sectors, the one exception was the office sector, so they have rebounded pretty nicely, and we will continue to monitor them, along with all the other managers within the real estate and real assets segment. And then I'll just conclude with real assets, so this is PIMCO Diversified Real Assets, this is, again, a fund that's gonna be diversified across a number of different inflation-sensitive areas like REITs, tips, and commodities. This quarter, the three main buckets were down, down and finished, you know, the portfolio, diversified portfolio was down about 3% this quarter, again, as REITs, which is highly sensitive to interest rate movements, were down this quarter, but longer term, again, you know, we would expect this to perform kinda in between a stock and a bond, and I think if you look at the longer-term performance, you can see that it certainly has done that, particularly over the five-year period, up about 4.6%, whereas equity was up double digits in US, and fixed income was up about, really, it was down about 0.33%, the AG. So performing as we would expect over the longer term, but again, shorter-term spikes to inflation and rate changes, it's gonna be tough for them to keep up in the short term. Any questions on performance? If there aren't, I'm just going to jump ahead a few slides, and we'll wrap up here. So this is the portion of our presentation where we give you updates on the various investment managers. There are a few this quarter. I would say that all three of them are notable updates, but are not actionable, so again, this is in conjunction with our global manager research group that follows these managers very closely. We received a few updates that I just want to share with you all this morning. The first being Dodge & Cox, so this is your large-cap value manager. We were informed that the CEO of Dodge & Cox will be retiring at the end of this year, so there was some shifting within the, within the, you know, the president, excuse me, Roger Koh, has been appointed her successor, so he is going to retain his title as president and be elevated to CEO, and then David Heff will assume the role of chair, which was previously held by Dana. So some changes there. I would just say that, you know, we don't have any concerns with the CEO transition. You know, Dodge & Cox has been very upfront and really methodical about how they make changes, and, you know, they tend to give a pretty good runway and are pretty thoughtful about who they elevate within the organization as needed. So we're gonna continue to monitor this. I think one thing to note, Carl Marcin, as part of these changes, he was a member of the Stock Fund U.S. Equity Investment Committee, so that's the committee that oversees your strategy. He will be, or he did resign from the firm at the end of 2024. No changes to the committee that oversees your investment, but consists of six very senior members at Dodge & Cox, ranging from anywhere from 15 to 30 years of experience. Moving to slide 19, JP Morgan. Another change there. So this is for the Strategic Property Fund. So what happened was is one of their other strategies within their real estate platform, the U.S. Real Estate Income and Growth Fund had a retirement announcement, and one of the members from the Strategic Property Fund, which is the fund that you are all invested in at this point, is going to be named the new portfolio of this other product that Nancy Brown will be stepping down, and Caitlin Simon will be backfilling her role as lead portfolio manager. So a change to the Strategic Property Fund's portfolio management team again, but going forward, the team is gonna consist of Sue Colossa, Brian Nottage, and Jason Curran. So again, we don't have major concerns with that change, and we'll just continue to monitor the current portfolio management team with Ms. Simon moving over to the other strategy. Page 20, an update on Mackay Shields. So they had a new CEO change as well. Allison Macucci, I believe I'm pronouncing that correctly, was named the CEO of Mackay Shields at the beginning of this year, so certainly early innings on the change. She's a 23-year veteran of New York Life, which is the parent company of Mackay Shields, and has been for quite some time. So I think, again, something that's notable that we're gonna keep an eye on, but it's really too early to get an idea of what sort of strategic changes are gonna be in place. But as it relates to your particular strategy that you're invested in, one of the high-yield analysts on the account, Maureen O'Callaghan, left the firm at the end of 2024. So she joined just about five years ago from a competitor. She covered a couple different sectors, so telecom, cable, and media. So they're gonna do a search to replace her, but in the meantime, they're gonna backfill her coverage with the folks that you see there listed on that page. So again, senior members of the team will be taking over those sector coverages, and they're looking to fill the role. It's not clear when they're going to fill it, but we're gonna keep an eye on that as well. But again, no concerns with the departure. We think the team is still really strong and can kind of stabilize her coverage as they find somebody else to fill her role. And then lastly, thank you for staying patient with us. Wanted to give an update on Siegel, Bryan, and Hamill. So Siegel, Bryan, and Hamill is one of your investment managers. They manage a core fixed income strategy for you all. They are owned by CI Financial, so this is a publicly traded Canadian financial services company. It was announced recently that CI Financial, so that is the parent company of Siegel, has entered into agreement to be taken private from a company called Mubadala Capital, which is an affiliate of the Sovereign Wealth Fund of the government of Abu Dhabi. So this transaction is not closed yet. It's expected to close later this summer. From our conversations with the leadership at CI, you know, they were approached in last summer to take themselves private. It's something that they've been trying to do for quite some time, trying to strategically buy shares back within the market to eventually become private, but they realized that that's gonna take quite some time, so you could see seven to eight years. This agreement, this transaction, really kind of tightened up that timeframe quite a bit and thought it was something that they were attracted with Mubadala's offer. This is not the first time that this company has transacted and purchased other institutional asset managers, so there is some track record there to keep in mind. As part of this, I think importantly though, but as part of this transaction, the CI management team will remain intact and there's really no changes to Siegel, Brine, and Hamill as well, so they're gonna continue to do what they do, and that's manage fixed income and manage equities for institutional investors such as yourself, but it's something that we are going to monitor closely and keep an eye on when the deal closes, what the majority stake will be for Mubadala, and certainly monitor flows within Siegel, Brine, and Hamill as well to see if there's any changes there or sudden withdrawals from clients. We don't think that. We don't think there's gonna be flight risk from the teams. It's just different ownership structure going forward. So more to come on that front. We'll likely have updates at the next meeting that we're here. If not in May, certainly in the fall while the deal closes. Thank you so much. Are there any final questions for the team? No? Thank you both very much. We appreciate it. I think just for the board members, this was a good healthy discussion about a lot of things today, so thank you for sticking with it, and I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Thank you. Is there a second? I think people want to stick around. All those in favor, say aye. All right, we are adjourned. Thank you all very much. 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