Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Daniel Harris from Goldman Sachs.
Daniel Harris – Goldman Sachs
I was wondering if you could comment a little bit Howard on the trajectory of some of the revenues in the fourth quarter the BGC business, it looks like you saw a real nice pick up in foreigns and credits but rates were sluggish on sequentially and year over year was probably the lowest growing. How would you characterize that business with what the Fed is doing and how we should think about that going forward in 2008?
Lee Amaitis
The rates business starts from a much higher basis. We have always been known that to be our primary business and that’s what we built the company—the rebuild of BGC company worked on. To have the 10% increase is not something that we should be worried about in the sense that its actually going up on a day to day basis and I think that what we’ve seen is we were slow to start in credit and we’ve done significant changes in the foreign exchange markets in terms of technology which we have benefited on the growth.
Daniel Harris – Goldman Sachs
As I look at the trend on the year over year basis for the first couple quarters into the fourth you were up very, very nicely and then I’m wondering is the fourth quarter seasonally slower in this business or is it something that the environment is impacting that business?
Howard Lutnick
The seasonally slower trade especially we see it in rates in August and December it simply everybody goes on vacation. The business certainly, our rates business is in a very strong position and doing very very well and we expect it to continue to grow faster than the industry average. Each of our credit segments we expect to grow faster than the industry and the rates business we have a broad global rates business but as Lee discussed breaking into the Belgian market across but MTS had excluded for itself had Belgian approval now gives us a leg up in order to grow that business. We also expect some of the same kind of approval from the Dutch government as well. These are exciting things that will improve our growth rate in our rates business compared to the industry as a whole.
Lee Amaitis
The other thing that we should pay attention to is that in 2007 there was no August so the seasonality of August. The fourth quarter actually we saw the markets slow down in terms of turn over in the fourth quarter as the seasonality for December kicked in. Because of the volatility in the market place in August the numbers that you will see will probably be balanced out over the course of going into 2008. August was an exceptional month for dealer brokers.
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