You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: I'm Hallie Miller, Evercore's Head of Investor Relations.
Joining me on the call today are John Weinberg and Ralph Schlosstein, our Co-Chairman and Co-CEOs; and Bob Walsh, our CFO.
These factors include, but are not limited to, those discussed in Evercore's filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K.
We continue to believe that it is important to evaluate Evercore's performance on an annual basis.
As we have noted previously, our results for any particular quarter are influenced by the timing of transaction closings.
We began our last earnings call commenting on what a difference a year had made.
And as we sit here today, not only are things dramatically different from a year ago, but things are also somewhat better than even three months ago.
Over the past three months, we have witnessed a material improvement in the global economy, in global markets and in Evercore's business.
The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines accelerated in the U.S. and in many countries around the world during the quarter, and we experienced a decline in new daily cases in areas where vaccination rates are high.
We are grateful for the progress being made against the pandemic, but we also are cognizant that there are many around the world who have not been as fortunate to date and are in earlier stages of overcoming this pandemic.
And while we are encouraged by the progress being made overall, we continue to monitor the new COVID variants, the ongoing vaccine rollout in the U.S. and other parts of the world and the data on infection rates, which unfortunately seem to be rising right now, particularly in areas with lower vaccination rates.
We have delivered strongly for our clients over the past 17 months advising them on their most important strategic, financial and capital requirements during one of the most uncertain and volatile periods of our lifetimes.
And we produced extraordinary financial results for our shareholders.
And while we achieved a lot while operating as a predominantly remote firm, we are genuinely energized by the reopening of our offices that began toward the end of the second quarter.
We remain firmly committed to our culture of in-office collaboration, apprenticeship and mentorship, and we look forward to bringing our teams back to the office over the next several weeks and months.
That said, we have learned a lot about operating flexibly over the past 17 months, and we are committed to integrating more flexible work arrangements into the way we work going forward.
As the macroeconomic environment continued to strengthen throughout the quarter, our business did as well.
Our results, which represent the best first half in our history, reflect the breadth and diversity of our capabilities, our team's relentless client focus and the continued favorable environment for M&A and capital raising.
And while we continue to believe that we are in the early stages of the next M&A up-cycle, we are mindful that the resurgence of the virus in certain geographies, the outlook for inflation in interest rates and potential regulatory scrutiny and tax changes could affect the trajectory and the length of that up-cycle even though there is absolutely no evidence of that today.
High levels of announced M&A transaction volume continued during the quarter.
The total dollar volume of announced M&A increased 17% sequentially as the number of transactions increased 7% and the average deal size increased 10%.
In fact, the second quarter represents the fourth straight quarter to surpass up $1 trillion in announced M&A activity and the first time ever the trailing 12 months activity exceeded $5 trillion.
And large transactions are making a significant comeback compared to this time last year.
This continued high level of activity led to record second quarter revenues and is adding yet again to our already strong backlogs.
All of our capital advisory businesses, public and private debt and equity, continue to be meaningful contributors to our firmwide results.
While the hot market for equity issuance cooled a bit during the quarter, it still remains well above historical averages.
The investments that we have made in our ECM capabilities and our enhanced sector coverage enable us to participate in a wide array of assignments across many sectors and to take an increasingly large role in these assignments.
In the private capital advisory businesses, momentum in capital raising for financial sponsors continued and secondary market activity remained high, particularly activity related to single asset and multi-asset continuation funds.
Traditional restructuring opportunities have been more limited, given the strength of the economic recovery, the strong availability of credit and the positive environment for M&A and capital raising.
But our team is adapting to meet client needs, working with financial sponsors and creditors on liability management and debt advisory assignments, though admittedly not as busy as they were in July of last year.
Our equities business, Evercore ISI, continues to produce and deliver high-quality research and service to our clients, and we continue to make investments in our platform.
The team delivered a solid quarter, in line with its historical 3-year quarterly average, as the impact of lower volatility and trading was partially offset by investments we have made to support our clients more broadly, particularly in converts and agency options.
And solid performance continues to drive assets under management growth in our Wealth Management business.
We continue to add talent in all parts of the firm, providing the fuel for future growth.
And John will talk more about this in his remarks.
We look forward to working with Celeste as she helps to drive the next stage of our firm's growth.
Let me now turn to our financial results.
We achieved record second quarter and first half adjusted net revenues, adjusted operating income, adjusted operating margin, adjusted net income, adjusted earnings per share, driven by continued revenue growth and strong operating leverage.
Second quarter adjusted net revenues of $691.2 million grew 34% year-over-year.
Year-to-date, adjusted net revenues of $1.36 billion increased 43% compared to the prior year period.
Second quarter advisory fees of $561.4 million grew 67% year-over-year.
Year-to-date advisory fees of $1.07 billion increased 54% versus the prior year period and represent the first time that we have exceeded $1 billion in advisory revenues for the first half of the year.
Our trailing 12-month advisory fees exceeded $2 billion for the first time in our history.
Based on current consensus estimates and actual results, we expect to maintain our number 4 ranking in advisory fees among all publicly traded investment banking firms for the last 12 months and to grow our market share relative to these firms.
In the first half of the year, we also continued to narrow the gap between Evercore and the number 3 ranked firm in terms of trailing 12 months advisory fees.
Our efforts to solidify further our position as the leading independent investment bank and to compete with firms larger than us have been recognized by clients and by industry observers as we were recently selected by Euromoney to be North America's best bank for advisory in 2021, and that was among all firms, not just among the independent firms.
Second quarter underwriting fees of $48 million declined 49% year-over-year, but excluding two sizable fees during the second quarter of 2020, one from PNC BlackRock and one from Danaher, underwriting fees were essentially flat year-over-year.
Year-to-date, underwriting fees of $127.3 million increased 11% versus the prior year period, even including the PNC BlackRock and Danaher fees.
While there was a slowdown in equity issuance during the quarter, largely driven by fewer SPAC IPOs, demand for capital raising continues to be strong more broadly.
The breadth of our capabilities and enhanced sector coverage have enabled us to work on diverse assignments for clients, and our second quarter underwriting revenues include engagements from seven different sectors.
Second quarter commissions and related revenue of $50.7 million declined 7% year-over-year as both volumes and volatility were lower relative to the elevated levels in the second quarter of 2020.
Year-to-date commissions and related revenues of $104.3 million declined 5% versus the prior year period.
Year-to-date revenues are 6% higher than the first half average of the prior three years, which includes the extreme volatility during the first half of last year.
Second quarter asset management and administration fees of $19 million increased 25% year-over-year as quarter end AUM were $11.1 billion, an increase of 23% year-over-year, principally related to positive investment performance and market appreciation.
Year-to-date asset management and administration fees of $36.8 million increased 21% versus the prior year period.
Our adjusted compensation ratio for the second quarter and year-to-date is 59%.
This reflects our current best judgment on compensation for the year, recognizing both the factors that may affect revenues in the second half of the year and the current pressures on market compensation for our industry.
As always, we will reassess our compensation ratio at the end of the third quarter and again at year-end and make adjustments then, if appropriate.
Second quarter noncompensation costs of $73.1 million declined 5% year-over-year.
Our noncompensation ratio for the second quarter is 10.6%.
Year-to-date noncompensation costs of $145.8 million declined 9% versus the prior year period, and Bob will comment more on noncomp expenses in his remarks.
Second quarter adjusted operating income and adjusted net income of $210 million and $154 million increased 105% and 115%, respectively.
Year-to-date adjusted operating income and adjusted net income of $412 million and $316.5 million increased 122% and 144%, respectively.
We delivered a second quarter operating margin of 30.4% and second quarter adjusted earnings per share of $3.17, an increase of 107% year-over-year.
Year-to-date adjusted margin is 30.3% and adjusted earnings per share of $6.47 increased 136% versus the prior year.
Finally, we continue to execute our capital return strategy, and we resumed our historical policy of returning cash not needed for investment in our business to our shareholders through share repurchases and, of course, dividends.
We returned $221 million to shareholders during the quarter through dividends and the repurchase of 1.4 million shares.
Year-to-date, we returned nearly $500 million through dividends and the repurchase of 3.3 million shares, a record level of capital return for our shareholders.
We achieved our commitment to offset the dilution associated with our annual bonus RSU grants through share repurchases in the first quarter.
So these additional repurchase in the second quarter represent discretionary buyback activity that shrinks the shareholder base.
Our dividend -- our Board declared a dividend of $0.68.
Our second quarter and first half results reflect the breadth and diversity of our capabilities supported by a positive macroeconomic environment for strategic merger activity, capital raising and investing.
Both strategics and financial sponsors have been driven to transact as they are focused on growth opportunities, technological disruption and the role of ESG.
And with the key ingredients for M&A strengthening, the volume number and size of announced transactions increased during the quarter.
In this robust environment, our teams have been busy working on a variety of assignments globally for our clients.
We sustained our number 1 league table ranking in dollar volume of announced M&A transactions in the U.S. among independent firms for the 12-month period ending June 30.
Our high level of activity is translating to our financial results.
We achieved a third straight quarter of advisory revenues greater than $500 million.
And as Ralph mentioned, we surpassed $1 billion in the first half advisory revenues for the first time with strong contribution across capabilities globally, including M&A, capital advisory and strategic defense and shareholder advisory.
We have prominent roles on some of the biggest announcements of the year, including serving as the lead advisor to Grab on its $40 billion SPAC merger, the largest SPAC merger in history and serving as the sole advisor to Nuance on its pending $19.7 billion sale to Microsoft.
And we worked on a greater number of assignments and grew our average fee size in the first half compared to the first half of last year.
Our industry-leading strategic defense and shareholder advisory team continues to be extremely busy and is currently advising companies representing $1.5 trillion in market value in activist defense.
This is an important capability for us because many of our defense clients subsequently turned to us for advice on strategic matters.
Our underwriting business had a solid quarter, and activity and backlogs in this business continue to be strong.
We participated in a number of significant transactions across a variety of sectors during the second quarter, including 31 transactions that raised nearly $10 billion in total proceeds across seven sectors.
And of the ECM transactions that we participated in during the quarter, 60% were as an active bookrunner, including in consumer lead left bookrunner on Post Holdings SPAC; in biopharma active bookrunner on Centessa Pharmaceuticals IPO; and in e-commerce active bookrunner on 1stDibs IPO.
And we participated in our first direct listing for ZipRecruiter as their financial advisor.
As we mentioned last quarter, our investments in our ECM platform have earned us a place in the top 20 for underwriting revenue as estimated by Dealogic for the 12-month period ending June 30 for deals listed on the U.S. exchanges, excluding bought deals.
We are focused on strategically gaining share and working our way toward the top 10, which is currently comprised of banks that use their balance sheets to win underwriting business.
Given our strategic approach to SPAC underwriting, we believe we can consistently gain share without the volatility that others, who work highly dependent on SPACs, may experience.
Activity in our private capital advisory groups, our secondaries advisory business and our primary fundraising business continued to be very strong.
Our success in this area is driven by our strong client relationships and our outstanding track record.
In restructuring, many companies and sectors continue to take advantage of the strong economic recovery and access to capital to restructure out of court.
Our team continues to work through previous engagements and is focused on liability management assignments and partnering with our debt advisory team for private financing activity.
We continue to believe that there could be a longer tail to the restructuring cycle as certain sectors and companies take longer to recover.
In equities, while volumes and volatility moderated from their pandemic highs across the street, we remain engaged with our clients and focused on producing and delivering high-quality research and service for them.
Our corporate access team was especially busy in the quarter and ran three flagship conferences, including our inaugural TMT Conference, our 13th annual macro investment conference and our 2nd Annual Consumer & Retail Summit, each with hundreds of institutional investors participating.
We also arranged highly topical full-day thematic events that were well attended by clients.
Our newer capabilities, including options and convertibles, continued to perform well during the quarter as well.
Finally, assets under management and our Wealth Management business finished the quarter at $11.1 billion as long-term performance remains solid and net new business continued to be positive.
We also made several hires for this team, including a National Director of Wealth Planning and a Director of Trust Services.
Let me now turn to discuss some of our priorities going forward, including our initiatives focused on long-term growth.
We continue to believe that there is substantial opportunity to grow our investment banking business through a combination of maintaining our high current levels of activity, the continued seasoning of ramping SMDs as they work toward full productivity and broadening our footprint and our client coverage through strategic hiring.
The breadth and diversity of our platform positions us well to participate meaningfully in the current M&A and capital raising environment.
We also have more than 30 SMDs on our platform that have either joined or been promoted within the last three years that represent additional opportunities for growth as they continue to ramp to our high levels of productivity.
And we continue to focus on expanding our capabilities, enhancing our sector and geographic coverage and improving our coverage of the most significant client groups.
The expansion of our underwriting capabilities has driven significant revenue growth, and there continues to be meaningful growth opportunities, as I mentioned just a few minutes ago.
On the advisory side, we believe that there is significant opportunity to expand our coverage model so that we can continue to grow both revenues and our share of fees.
Our efforts to fill in the white space are focused on effectively covering large multinational firms and financial sponsors and enhancing our sector and geographic coverage, including the four techs, biotech, fintech, greentech and TMT, pharma and consumer and U.K. and Europe.
As we move into the second half of the year, we remain focused on adding talented individuals to our firm as we seek continued growth.
We're actively recruiting highly talented individuals to our team, and we continue to have many conversations with senior level candidates in the capabilities, sectors and geographies that can contribute to our growth objectives.
Competition for the caliber of talent we are recruiting is always high, and our dialogues with senior level recruits continue to be elevated.
Historically, we've added four to eight advisory SMDs per annum, and we continue to believe that we will be at or near the high end of that range and perhaps above it.
In addition to the two senior advisory directors who joined us earlier this year, we have three committed advisory senior managing directors who will join us over the next several months, strengthening our coverage of the healthcare, fintech and our coverage of financial sponsors.
In addition to hiring at the most senior levels, we are building out our teams at all levels to meet the demands of the industry and the elevated pace of activity.
And we -- as we add to our teams, we are also focused on returning to our offices globally with the health and safety of our employee as our top priority, and we developed plans to meet that need.
We have seen a steady increase of in-person attendance over the summer months, and we look forward to up to a more full return in September.
We also continue to make meaningful progress on our ESG initiatives and diversity, equity and inclusion.
In May, we published our inaugural Sustainability Report and launched our dedicated DE&I web page.
And just last week, we held two day of understanding events associated with our commitment as signatories of the CEO action pledge.
We look forward to continuing to have candid dialogue around DE&I and inspiring change across our firm globally.
Lastly, we remain committed to operating our firm with financial discipline and delivering strong returns to our shareholders, returning excess cash not needed for investments in our business or to fund prior deferred compensation arrangements to our shareholders through dividends, share repurchases, while maintaining a strong and liquid balance sheet.
We very much look forward to bringing our teams back together in person so that we can continue to build and strengthen the culture that has been the foundation of our success.
As always, let's begin with our GAAP results.
For the second quarter of 2021, net revenues, net income and earnings per share on a GAAP basis were $688 million, $140 million and $3.21, respectively.
Year-to-date, net revenues, net income and earnings per share on a GAAP basis were $1.35 billion, $285 million and $6.46, respectively.
During the quarter, G5 Holdings, our former affiliate in Brazil, repaid their outstanding note to us for approximately USD12 million, enabling us to financially exit our relationship there.
The settlement resulted in a gain of $4.4 million, which we have excluded from our second quarter 2021 adjusted net revenues.
Our GAAP tax rate for the second quarter was 22.1% compared to 24.5% in the prior year period.
Year-to-date, our GAAP tax rate is 19.2% compared to 25% in the prior year period.
On a GAAP basis, the share count was $43.7 million (sic) [43.7 million] for the quarter and $44.1 million (sic) [44.1 million] for the first half.
Our share count for adjusted earnings per share was 48.5 million for the quarter and 49 million for the first half.
Focusing on noncompensation costs.
We continued to generate significant operating leverage in part due to lower noncompensation expense.
Firmwide noncompensation costs per employee were approximately $39,000 for the second quarter, down 8% on a year-over-year basis.
This level of noncompensation costs per employee contrasts to our 3-year quarterly average measured from 2017 to 2019 of approximately $47,000 per employee.
Not surprisingly, the decrease in costs per employee versus last year primarily reflects lower travel expense.
As we look ahead, we expect expenses on a per head basis to begin to increase as we continue to evolve toward more normal operations, including returning to our offices, traveling to engage an in-person dialogue and meetings with our clients and recruiting and onboarding senior talent, which we expect in the second half of the year.
We do expect, however, some cost efficiency as we move forward as we utilize the technologies that enabled us to work so effectively over the past 16 months.
Looking at our balance sheet.
As of June 30, we held $1.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents and investment securities, up from the prior quarter as our balance sheet grows throughout the year, as we accrue for compensation obligations that will be paid in the first quarter of next year.
As we have said before, we hold cash and investment securities to fund our obligations and commitments.
Cash and investment securities at the end of the quarter support the minimum level of capital required to operate our businesses, including regulatory capital requirements, accrued comp that is both on the balance sheet and committed but not yet expensed and, of course, earnings that were earned in the second quarter that have not yet been returned to shareholders.
Finally, in closing for me and before we turn to questions, as Ralph noted and most of you know, this is my final earnings call with Evercore.
The past 14 years as the CFO of Evercore have been an exciting and challenging journey.
There have been several lively ones.
We have built a strong team over the years, a team that makes these calls easy for John, Ralph and me and a team that I have been privileged to work with and to lead.
Our leadership, as are our analysts and investors, remain in very capable hands.

user
compname posts qtrly diluted earnings per share $3.21.
compname reports record second quarter 2021 results; quarterly dividend of $0.68 per share.
evercore inc - qtrly diluted earnings per share $3.21.

assistant