Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from the line of Ken Worthington of JPMorgan.
Ken Worthington - JPMorgan
Hi, good morning. Maybe first for Greg, can you just flesh out your comments on the margin outlook and investment, maybe a little bit more details on what kind of investments you think you would make? How much they may actually weigh on margins and any other flavor would be wonderful.
Gregory Frost
You know, Ken, I won't go too much in detail. You know I would say this, I think all asset managers find themselves in a position today where they've cut back on their costs. We spent the better part of '09 kind of waiting for the market to stabilize a little bit, and now that we're here, at least it's what feels like a little more stable market, I think everybody is in the same boat, but we're looking ahead to 2010 and beyond and figuring out what are those growth opportunities in the business that we can invest in to generate top-line growth.
I'd be naive to think that we can do that without investments and I also would be naive to think that we can do it without the support of our employees. I think you're going to have to make some investments in this business. The magnitude and what that looks like in the future, I think, we can flesh out as we get further down the road with you. Suffice it to say, we are focused on the cost base. As Tim said, we're focused on margin expansion, but I do think it will be tempered by what has to be increased investments in certain parts of this business.
Ken Worthington - JPMorgan
As a follow-up maybe for Tim, we have seen some turnover in sales, I think the top three have left recently, maybe help us understand what's going on, any risk of further departures and the impact these departures are having on sales, if any?
Timothy Armour
Sure. The comment I'd make is Janus across the board has a pretty broad, deep, high-quality bench, and I think we're a target within the industry because we have really super people, and we had two of those three people that were sort of picked up by competitors because they are very talented. Their departure came after the leader of the group, Dominic Martellaro, decided to sort of take time and go on the beach. He didn't leave to go to another provider. He just wanted to stop traveling on airplanes. Having said that, we've been able to, without missing a beat I think, asked Robin Berry to step up and sort of play a more important role heading up the distribution and backfilled in that with John Ingram, who was within our sales organization, one of the more talented executives that has taken a leadership position, and then Drew Elder, who is handling sort of the platform, the domestic platform for sort of our larger client base.
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