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 guess I'd first say that it's pretty clear the diversity and the relevancy of our offerings as well as the outstanding effort from our colleagues has resulted in another great quarter.
Our strategy and efforts are clearly yielding results as we delivered a 70% increase in fee revenue with really strong profitability, earnings per share of $1.37 and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.7%, and these results are the continuation of our momentum over recent quarters and our performance speaks to our agility and importantly to the purpose for decisions and deliberate actions we've taken not only over the last few quarters but over the last several years, and now they've come together in a critical mass of opportunity.
As a result, today's Korn Ferry is poised to seek the opportunities of tomorrow.
And those opportunities begin with a world of work that's in a massive state of transition and maybe always will be.
Companies reimagining their businesses, from strategy, to people, to culture, career Nomads, aging demographics, a real war for talent, work from anywhere, anytime, and last but not least, the digitization of everything.
These are the features of our new landscape of work.
And we don't see that changing anytime soon.
In response, companies are rethinking their org structures, their roles, responsibilities, how they compensate, engage, motivate and upscale their workforce, as well as the type of agile talent they hire and how they hire that talent, and they're all going to need to lead differently.
And as I said, this new world is creating opportunities for Korn Ferry.
The mega changes that I described align very nicely with our businesses.
Today, wherever and whenever leadership meets talent, Korn Ferry is at that cross section, enabling agility in a world in transition and driving performance for our clients.
To position our Company for long-term success, we remain relentlessly focused on this dynamic world of work.
Our scaled capabilities include org strategy, leadership and professional development, assessment, succession and rewards and talent acquisition, and of course, the judgment and expertise built from decades of experience and insight into the questions companies are grappling with across industries.
We're going to continue to drive an integrated go-to-market strategy through our marquee and regional accounts, which represent about 35% of our portfolio.
And this facilitates not only growth and enduring partnerships, but also is key to more scalable and durable revenues.
In the quarter, about 30% of our revenue was driven by cross referrals, an all-time high, which I think demonstrates the effectiveness of our go-to-market strategy.
Today, the fight for talent is absolutely more profound than we've ever seen.
This new world is driving a robust market for our talent acquisition expertise, from Executive Search to Pro Search to RPO, we're helping companies find the right talent, fitting the right needs.
And looking at our digital and consulting businesses, we've been actively marrying our capability with today's mega trends.
The result is larger projects with greater sustainability and more durable revenue, in areas such as D&I and organizational transformation, as well as core solutions such as assessment, pay and governance, and leadership and professional development.
Looking ahead, I truly feel we have the right strategy with the right people at the right time to help our clients drive performance in this new world, and our results are clearly affirming this belief.
With that, I am joined by Gregg Kvochak and Bob Rozek.
Our financial results in the first quarter were outstanding and they continue to push to new highs.
Our unique mix of organizational consulting solutions continue to grow in relevance and it gives us a greater share of strengthening global markets.
Clients are embracing our solutions to help them navigate today's unprecedented and rapidly changing work and social environment, and that's driving our fee revenue and profitability to new heights.
Now let me touch on a couple of highlights from the first quarter.
As Gary mentioned, fee revenue in the first quarter was up $241 million or 70% year-over-year and $30 million or 5% sequentially, and that's reaching an all-time high of $585 million.
Now that's quite an accomplishment hitting consecutive highs and only the third and then fourth quarter removed from the trough.
Consolidated fee revenue growth in the first quarter measured year-over-year was up 81% in the Exe Search, 103% in RPO and Pro Search, 50% in Consulting and 44% in Digital.
Also our new business growth in the first quarter was very strong.
Our results continue to demonstrate the success of our go-to-market strategy.
Revenue generated from our marquee and regional accounts continues to steadily grow.
In the first quarter, revenue from our marquee and regional accounts was up 70% year-over-year and 4% sequentially.
And as Gary mentioned, in the first quarter, over 35% of our consolidated fee revenue was generated from these accounts.
In addition, cross line of business referrals continue to grow.
In the first quarter, about 30% of fee revenue was generated from cross line of business referrals, which is up from 25.5% and 28.5% in the first and fourth quarters of fiscal '21, respectively.
Now earnings and profitability also reached new highs in the first quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA grew $111 million year-over-year and $8.5 million or 7.5% sequentially to $121 million, with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.7%.
Now, that's our third consecutive quarter with an adjusted EBITDA margin over 20%.
Our earnings and profitability continue to benefit from higher consultants and execution staff productivity and lower G&A spend, driven by virtual delivery processes and reduced levels of related business development spend.
Fully diluted earnings per share also reached a record level in the first quarter, improving to $1.37, which was up from $1.56 compared to adjusted fully diluted earnings per share in the first quarter of fiscal '21 and up $0.16 or 13% sequentially.
I would like to point out that in the first quarter our fully diluted earnings per share benefited by $0.07 to $0.08 from a lower tax rate of 23.8%.
Now, currently we don't believe that this rate is sustainable, and for all of fiscal '22 we're projecting an effective tax rate in the range of 26% to 27%.
Now turning to new business, which also grew to record levels by accelerating each consecutive month of the quarter.
We're pleased to share that our new business generation in each of the last six months is in our top 10 ever with three of the months occupying spots, one, two and three.
Now that's a clear demonstration of the relevance of our solutions in the world today.
Now more specifically on a consolidated basis, new business awards, excluding RPO were up 59% year-over-year and up approximately 2% sequentially.
New business growth was strongest for Professional Search, which was up 14% from the fourth quarter of fiscal '21.
RPO new business had another strong quarter in the first quarter with $113 million of total contract awards.
Our investable cash balance also improved.
At the end of the first quarter, cash and marketable securities totaled $904 million.
Now when you exclude amounts reserved for deferred comp arrangements and for accrued bonuses, the global investable cash balance at the end of the first quarter was approximately $614 million, which is up $103 million or 20% year-over-year.
Now of that amount, approximately $220 million was in the United States.
It continues to be our priority to invest back into our business and that's to maximize our future growth.
This includes the hiring of additional fee earners and execution staff.
Over the last quarter, total new fee earner consultants grew by 127, which includes both new hires in recent promotions.
Additionally, consistent with our balanced approach to capital allocation, we repurchased approximately $3 million of stock in the first quarter and paid a quarterly cash dividend of approximately $6.9 million.
Let's start with the KF Digital.
Global fee revenue for KF Digital was $81 million in the first quarter, which was up nearly 44% year-over-year and flat sequentially.
The subscription and license component of KF Digital fee revenue continues to steadily improve.
In the first quarter, subscription and license fee revenue was $24 million, which was up approximately 14% year-over-year.
More importantly, global new business for KF Digital in the first quarter was $108 million, with 36% of this new business related to subscription and license services, up 69% year-over-year -- on a year-over-year basis.
Earnings and profitability remained strong for KF Digital in the first quarter with adjusted EBITDA of $25.6 million and a 31.8% adjusted EBITDA margin.
Now turning to Consulting.
In the first quarter, Consulting generated $148.5 million of fee revenue, which was up approximately $49 million or 50% year-over-year.
Fee revenue growth was broad-based across all solution areas and strongest regionally in North America, which was up over 70% year-over-year.
Consulting new business was also very strong in the first quarter, growing approximately 36% year-over-year and 2% sequentially to a new all-time high.
Additionally, while the volume of engagements over $500,000 has remained strong, in the first quarter the volume of smaller assignments, those under $500,000 in value grew sequentially, potentially signaling a rebound in demand and spending by our smaller regional clients who tend to buy focus point solutions.
Regionally, new business growth was broad-based in the first quarter with both EMEA and APAC having the best quarter of new business in over two years.
Adjusted EBITDA for Consulting in the first quarter was $26.8 million with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 18.1%.
Growth for RPO and Professional Search continued to accelerate in the first quarter.
Globally, fee revenue was $139.3 million, which was up 103% year-over-year and approximately $19 million or 16% sequentially.
Both RPO and Professional Search continued to take advantage of the surge in demand for skilled professional labor.
RPO fee revenue grew approximately 98% year-over-year and 11% sequentially, while Professional Search fee revenue was up approximately 112% year-over-year and up 24% sequentially.
New business wins for both RPO and Professional Search were also extremely strong in the first quarter.
Professional Search new business was up 14% sequentially and RPO was awarded $113 million of new contracts consisting of $45 million of renewals and extensions and $68 million of new logo work.
Adjusted EBITDA for RPO and Professional Search continue to scale in the first quarter, improving to $34 million with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 24.4%.
Finally in the first quarter, global fee revenue for Executive Search reached a new all-time high of $217 million, which was up 81% year-over-year and 8% sequentially.
Growth was also broad based and led by North America, which grew 100% year-over-year and over 6% sequentially.
Our international regions continue to accelerate sequentially.
Fee revenue in EMEA and APAC were up approximately 4% and 22%, respectively.
We continue to aggressively invest in expanding our network of consultants in the first quarter.
The total number of dedicated Executive Search consultants worldwide at the end of the first quarter was 565, up 55 year-over-year and up 41 sequentially, including 22 colleagues who were recently promoted.
Annualized fee revenue production per consultant in the first quarter improved to a record $1.59 million and the number of new search assignments opened worldwide in the first quarter was up 57% year-over-year and 2% sequentially to 1,745.
In the first quarter, global Executive Search adjusted EBITDA grew to approximately $61.6 million, which was up $53.5 million year-over-year and up $11.7 million or 23.5% sequentially.
Adjusted EBITDA margin in the first quarter was 28.4%.
As I mentioned, new business in the first quarter grew to a new all-time high.
So we're really starting the second quarter with a strong backlog of work.
Now August is historically a seasonal month influenced by summer vacations, but new business for August was up approximately 41% year-over-year and was in line with our expectations.
Now if monthly trends in each of our lines of business are consistent with historical patterns and market conditions remained strong, we expect demand to continue to accelerate with new business up sequentially in September, peaking at a quarter high in October.
Additionally, as previously discussed, we're going to continue to make near term investments in consultants and execution staff to fuel future growth and we do expect employee productivity to remain strong and G&A spend to remain at or near current levels in the second quarter, keeping both earnings and profitability strong.
Now assuming no major Delta variant related lockdowns or changes in worldwide economic conditions, financial markets or foreign exchange rates, we expect our consolidated fee revenue in the second quarter of fiscal '22 to range from $585 million to $615 million and our consolidated diluted earnings per share to range from $1.30 to $1.44.
Now as we've begun our new fiscal year, we continue on a path of strong financial performance, leaving no doubt about our strategy or the durability of our business model.
Today, we stand alone in industry of one, going to market with unique end-to-end organizational consulting solutions that continue to grow in relevance.
Our robust new business generation over the past six months is a true barometer of marketplace recognition.
Korn Ferry has never been better positioned to serve all of its constituencies, colleagues, clients, candidates and shareholders for years to come.
With that, we would be glad to answer any questions you may have.

user
q1 earnings per share $1.37.
sees q2 earnings per share $1.30 to $1.44.
sees q2 fee revenue to be in range of $585 million and $615 million.

assistant