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: First, on a somber note, as we look at the events over the last couple of weeks, our thoughts, Korn Ferry's thoughts, are with the people of Ukraine and everyone who's been impacted by the destruction, the devastation, and the loss of thousands of lives.
Our prayers go out to all of those who were impacted by this unnecessary war and by the human misery that's taking place.
Turning from that, and an entirely different view, I am pleased with our results during the third quarter.
We once again achieved new financial performance size.
We generated about $681 million in fee revenue, that was up 43% year over year.
Our diluted and adjusted diluted earnings per share was $1.54 and $1.59, respectively, and those were also new highs.
Our performance over the recent quarters is a reflection of the relevance of our strategy and solutions, the resilience of our colleagues, and more importantly, the connection with our Korn Ferry brand.
We're replicating and scaling our success and continuing to lead innovation at the intersection of talent and strategy in an increasingly digitally enabled new world of work.
The metrics of our business are very good.
It's hard to believe that it was two years ago, almost to the day that the pandemic was declared.
And those were certainly uncertain times.
And now again, we face ourselves with uncertain times.
But when we think about the power of the firm, the breadth of what we offer, and particularly the sacrifices made by our colleagues over the last couple of years, it affirms what this company is all about.
We've accelerated from that uncertainty.
We're now up 32% compared to the quarter preceding the pandemic, which at that time was an all-time high, and we haven't just talked about it we've walked it.
We've walked it from the vast IP we have.
We developed over 1 million professionals a year.
We walked it by living our purpose, and we continue to innovate, replicate and scale, allowing people and organizations to exceed their potential in this rapidly changing world.
Elements of our strategy include driving a top-down go-to-market approach based on our marquee and regional accounts, which year to date represent about 37% of our portfolio.
This not only facilitates growth and enduring partnerships, but is also key to more scalable and durable revenues.
For example, on a year-to-date basis, about 28% of our revenue is driven by cross referrals within our firm, up several million dollars sequentially which demonstrates the effectiveness of our go-to-market strategy.
We also believe there's substantial market opportunity with our talent acquisition and interim businesses, particularly given the acceleration of the nomadic labor market.
And looking at our digital and consulting businesses, we'll continue to innovate, marrying Korn Ferry's capabilities with tomorrow's opportunities, from organizational transformation, to sales effectiveness and accelerated revenue growth to M&A and ESG.
We're going to continue to further push to monetize our IP and continue to move more of our digital business to a subscription offering.
And we're also going to scale our learning, development, outsourcing capabilities, LDO, leveraging our Korn Ferry Advance platform.
150,000 professionals around the world have used Advance, both as individuals and as part of their professional development journeys with their employers.
And lastly, we're going to maintain a balanced capital allocation strategy.
including a disciplined approach to M&A.
With that, I'm joined by Gregg Kvochak and Bob Rozek.
A couple of weeks ago, I celebrated my 10-year anniversary at Korn Ferry.
Looking back to when I started, I really believed that there were great opportunities ahead for us.
And as I stand here today, after 10 years, looking at the business we built, the data, the assets, the solutions, and most of all, the incredibly talented colleagues we have to serve our clients, it's pretty clear to me that I underestimated our true potential.
The investments we've made in IP, people, data, and processes have enabled us to thrive in today's environment and more importantly, have positioned us for future growth.
Our operational execution continues to drive consistent and superior financial performance.
I've always said the best way to measure performance is by looking at results.
Now you heard Gary say that we continue with strong financial performance in the third quarter, delivering new highs in our fee revenue and adjusted diluted earnings per share.
This is a direct result of the exceptional execution of our strategy and the growing relevance of our solutions.
You also heard Gary talk about our go-to-market success with our marquee and regional accounts and the cross line of business, top-line synergies we're able to generate with our highly complementary portfolio of services and solutions.
I look at the growing relevance of our consulting services and solutions around major issues or what we refer to as mega trends that companies are wrestling with today, whether it's ESG, diversity, equity and inclusion, accelerating revenue growth in a post-pandemic world or developing professionals and leaders to operate in the evolving digital world.
All of this leaves us uniquely positioned.
In fact, the only company able to meet the entire spectrum of human capital needs of companies across the globe, and we are well-positioned to continue to gain market share in the markets that we serve.
Now let me turn to the third quarter.
Fee revenue, as Gary indicated, was $681 million.
That's up $205 million or 43% year over year.
Normally, with the year-end holidays, our third quarter has historically been our seasonal low.
However, in the current year, fee revenue was actually up $41 million or 6% sequentially.
By line of business, fee revenue growth for executive search was up 42% year over year, while RPO and professional search was up 98%.
Year-over-year growth for consulting and digital was also very strong at 20% and 19%, respectively.
Earnings also grew to new highs in the quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA grew $42 million or 43% year over year to $138 million with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 20.3%.
Our earnings and profitability continue to benefit from both higher consultant and execution staff productivity as well as lower G&A spend.
Today, our earnings and profitability have never been higher.
If you go back and you look at the first three quarters of fiscal '20, that's right before the pandemic recession hit, our adjusted EBITDA is up 71% and it's actually grown two and a half times faster than our fee revenue has grown.
Our adjusted fully diluted earnings per share also advanced to a new high in the quarter, improving to $1.59 per share, which was actually up $0.64 year over year.
New business was also very strong in the third quarter, up 30% year over year, reaching a new quarterly high.
If you look at it by month, the consolidated new business, we saw a real sharp rebound in January from a seasonal low in December.
We saw solid new business growth in every line of business.
Of particular note, growth in our RPO new business was very strong at $135 million of new contract awards, and that's the second consecutive quarter they achieved that level.
Our investable cash position remains strong.
At the end of the third quarter, cash and marketable securities totaled about $1.1 billion.
Now if you exclude amounts reserved for deferred compensation arrangements and accrued bonuses, our global investable cash balance was approximately $592 million, which is up $58 million or 11% year over year.
I would note that the investable cash position is net of $91 million that we used to acquire the Lucas Group on November 1 and about $22 million for share repurchases in the quarter.
As Gary mentioned, we continue to take a balanced approach to allocating capital.
In addition to investing in M&A and hiring of additional fee earners and execution staff, we have repurchased approximately $55 million worth of our stock and have paid cash dividends of approximately $20 million so far in fiscal year '22.
I'm going to start with KF Digital.
Global fee revenue for KF Digital was $90.2 million in the third quarter, which was up 19% year over year.
Additionally, the subscription and licensing component of KF Digital fee revenue grew to $29 million in the third quarter, which was up 26% year over year and up 12% sequentially.
Globally, new business for KF Digital in the third quarter grew 8% year over year to $108 million, which was the fifth consecutive quarter over $100 million.
$39 million or 37% of the total digital new business in the third quarter was related to subscription and license sales.
Earnings and profitability remained strong with adjusted EBITDA of $28.1 million and a 31.2% adjusted EBITDA margin.
Now turning to consulting.
In the third quarter, Consulting generated $162.9 million of fee revenue, which was up approximately $27 million or 20% year over year.
Fee revenue growth continued to be broad-based across all solution areas and strong regionally in North America and EMEA, which were up 28% and 16%, respectively.
Consulting new business also reached a new high in the third quarter, growing approximately 10% year over year.
Regionally, new business growth in the third quarter was strongest in North America and EMEA, which were up 10% and 16%, respectively.
Adjusted EBITDA for Consulting in the third quarter was $28.6 million with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.5%.
The growth trend for RPO and professional search remained strong in the third quarter, driven by the surge in demand for top skilled professionals.
Globally, fee revenue grew to $188.6 million, which was up 98% year over year and up approximately $38 million or 25% sequentially.
RPO fee revenue grew approximately 68% year over year and 3% sequentially, while professional search revenue was up approximately 150% year over year, and up 67% sequentially.
The integration of the Lucas Group has gone well.
Revenue in the third quarter for the Lucas Group was approximately $33 million, which was up approximately 10% compared to the revenue for the three months preceding the acquisition.
New business wins for both RPO and professional search were also strong in the third quarter, reaching new highs.
Professional search new business was $93 million and RPO was awarded $135 million of new contracts, consisting of $74 million of renewals and extensions and $61 million of new logo work.
Adjusted EBITDA for RPO and professional search continued to scale with revenue improving to $44.1 million with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 23.4%.
Finally, in the third quarter, global fee revenue for executive search reached another new high of $239 million, which was up 42% year over year.
Growth was also broad-based with North America growing 44% year over year and EMEA and APAC growing 32% and 45%, respectively.
Market demand in international regions continued to improve in the third quarter with core sequential growth accelerating in EMEA, APAC and Latin America.
We continue to invest in expanding our team of consultants in the third quarter.
The total number of dedicated executive search consultants worldwide at the end of the third quarter was 581, just up 59 year over year and up 11 sequentially.
Annualized fee revenue production per consultant in the third quarter remained steady at $1.66 million.
And the number of new search assignments opened worldwide in the third quarter was up 37% year over year to 1,787.
In the third quarter, global executive search adjusted EBITDA grew approximately $66 million, which was up 24 -- grew to approximately $66 million, which was up $24 million year over year with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 27.5%.
As previously discussed, our consolidated new business grew to a new high in the third quarter, again, with real strength across all lines of business.
Backlog exiting the third quarter was strong as was February new business.
February generally is the shortest month in the year in terms of working days.
However, this February was actually our eighth best new business month ever excluding RPO.
And if you include RPO, it was actually our best new business month ever.
Now despite the continuing strength in new business trends and backlog coming out of Q3, the very recent situation in Eastern Europe presents a level of risk and uncertainty that is difficult to quantify.
With this in mind and assuming no new major pandemic-related lockdowns or further changes in worldwide geopolitical conditions, economic conditions, financial markets or foreign exchange rates, we expect our consolidated fee revenue in the fourth quarter to range from $670 million to $690 million and our consolidated adjusted diluted earnings per share to range from $1.49 to $1.63 per share and our GAAP diluted earnings per share to range from $1.44 per share to $1.60.
Now let me end as I started.
As I look ahead for all the reasons previously discussed, I'm more optimistic now than I have ever been about our long-term opportunity to continue to build on our financial success.
Our company today has more durable revenue streams, has achieved a new level of business activity and profitability that is sustainable and has positioned us for continued growth.
And we have a core set of integrated solutions that are highly relevant to the mega trends that we're seeing in the world today.
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'll conclude our remarks and be glad to answer any questions you may have.

user
q3 earnings per share $1.54.
qtrly adjusted earnings per share $1.59.
q4 fy'22 diluted earnings per share is expected to range between $1.44 to $1.60.
q4 fy'22 fee revenue is expected to be in range of $670 million and $690 million.
q4 fy'22 adjusted diluted earnings per share is expected to be in range from $1.49 to $1.6.

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