“So I anticipate that any expense growth would be revenue related and that we should be pretty flattish. Maybe we benefit in Q4 from seasonally slower activity.”

In context

“John McDonald: Okay, Brian. Alastair, I wanted to follow up on your expense commentary. Can you elaborate on the outlook for the second half? I think your prior outlook implied some improvement in the second half. And I think you just said you may or may not see that depending on the strength of the Markets business? Alastair Borthwick: Well, I think what we're trying to say is it always starts with us with head count discipline. So the head count has been pretty flattish. We've managed that pretty well all the way through the year. We don't see any change in that. So then the only variable that's left really is going to be around revenue related. Now we've seen pretty good growth, obviously, in sales and trading, up 15% year-over-year. We've seen pretty good growth in AUM fees, up 10%. So I anticipate that any expense growth would be revenue related and that we should be pretty flattish. Maybe we benefit in Q4 from seasonally slower activity. Operator: We'll take our next question from Ken Usdin with Autonomous Research. Kenneth Usdin: Alastair, thanks for the update on that trajectory for the second half of the year. I'm just wondering, as we move a step forward, if you can kind of just make sure we're still tracking right on the split between the loan securities and swap repricing and whether that step-up in that bucket is linear in the third and fourth? Or kind of just builds up as we get towards the end of the year? Alastair Borthwick: I think I would use linear. I think that's probably the easiest way to think about it. We said to everyone that we thought that the second half had a little bit more in the way of fixed rate asset repricing and cash flow swap repricing in the first half of the year. That accounts for the gro”