Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from [Guy Mankowski] - Bank of America Securities.
Patrick David in for [Guy Mankowski] - Bank of America Securities
Given the number of products you kind of expanded to particularly in fixed income and investment banking over the last year, can you kind of give us an idea of what businesses you believe are kind of fully ramped versus those that are still kind of getting ramped up?
Richard B. Handler
I think on the fixed income side of the equation, there really are five distinct businesses and they're all in the process of beginning to gain market share and beginning to get ramped up. That being said, we're not projecting anything into the future but I think we're relatively at early stage with each one of the businesses.
Patrick David in for [Guy Mankowski] – Bank of America Securities
And where do you think there are still kind of holes where you're looking to fill in or do you think you've kind of got the base of what you're looking for?
Richard B. Handler
I think for us, especially given how aggressive we were in the course of the last 18 months, there is a lot on our platform for us to work to integrate and to enhance just basically focusing on the various products and services. So, I don't think there are a whole lot of holes on our platform and there's a lot of us to do assimilating and getting to work together throughout the organization all the teams that we have.
Patrick David in for [Guy Mankowski] – Bank of America Securities
And could you give us an idea of how much of the sequential improvement in fixed income was a result of the muni business or is that too much detail?
Richard B. Handler
We don't break it out, but I would say we're happy to have them participate. They're participating exactly as we had planned and it's really been across the board within the fixed income platform. There's been pretty good client flows and that has resulted in the broad representation of good numbers.
Operator
Your next question comes from Chris Kotowski – Oppenheimer.
Chris Kotowski – Oppenheimer
I was wondering, when you have a team like Ben Lorello joined you or any of the other teams, I was wondering if the treatment on the deferred compensation. Does that all have to be expensed up front if you have to issue them restricted stock to take them out of their existing stock?
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