Real Estate Charges

3 Months Ended

Mar. 31, 2016

Restructuring and Related Activities [Abstract]

During 2010, we performed a comprehensive review of our real estate requirements in New York in connection with our workforce reductions, which commenced in 2008. As a result, during 2010 we decided to sub-lease over 380,000 square feet in New York (all of this space has been sublet) and consolidate our New York-based employees into two office locations from three. During the third quarter of 2012, in an effort to further reduce our global real estate footprint, we completed a comprehensive review of our worldwide office locations and began implementing a global space consolidation plan. As a result, we decided to sub-lease approximately 510,000 square feet of office space (all of this space has been sublet), more than 70% of which is New York office space (in addition to the 380,000 square foot space reduction in 2010), with the remainder consisting of office space in England, Australia and various U.S. locations.

During the first three months of 2016, we recorded pre-tax real estate charges of $27.6 million, resulting from new charges of $28.5 million relating to the further consolidation of office space at our New York offices, offset by changes in estimates related to previously recorded real estate charges.

The activity in the liability account relating to our 2010 and 2012 office space consolidation initiatives for the following periods is as follows:



	Three Months Ended March 31, 2016			Twelve Months Ended December 31, 2015
	(in thousands)

Balance as of beginning of period	$	116,064		$	148,429
Expense (credit) incurred	(391		)	2,258
Payments made	(5,289		)	(38,920		)
Interest accretion	1,075			4,297
Balance as of end of period	$	111,459		$	116,064