Before Steve Forbes sat down with Neuberger Berman Chairman and CEO George Walker, I asked Walker about his company's recent expansion in Asia and what it was like being a part of Lehman Brothers.  Alexandra Zendrian, Forbes: Your Income Opportunity Fund recently reached its 52-week high. What does that say about the state of the markets?  George Walker: We have a terrific high-yield fixed income team which has performed very, very well for clients, and obviously the asset class has also performed well. It's one of the few places in the market that we still see, in the fixed income market where we see real value despite the fact that performance has been strong with spreads at these levels.  As long as the folks stay in, sort of the 1% to 2% range, it's a space that we continue to feel good about. For us it's a great team. They've been together for a long time. They've produced consistently strong returns and have good mutual fund following. We're seeing big pension funds embracing the same strategy with the same team.  What kind of trends are you noticing among individual investors?  We're seeing enormous apprehension with regards to equity markets. Whether that's because of the volatility that we've experienced or things like the flash crash, which I think was disconcerting to individual investors, and so we, like others, have seen investors who are purchasing our funds usually through financial intermediaries, through brokerage houses and other places, with a strong focus on fixed income.  For those high-net-worth clients who have a direct relationship with us, we've tried to keep them more fully invested in equities, which we think still seem to be reasonably, we think there's reasonable value in equities. But you have to be mindful of the volatility.  What was it like being involved with Lehman Brothers ( LEHMQ - news - people ), and how has the firm changed since that time?  For us, it's terrific to once again be a private, employee-controlled firm. We've been in business for just over 70 years, most of which [was] as a private, employee-controlled firm, briefly as a publicly traded firm and then as a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers. The firm frankly thrived under each of the three arrangements, obviously with the last year under Lehman being particularly challenging for all of the obvious reasons. But clearly I think my job is easiest as a private firm, to be able to be totally focused on clients and to be able with a group of employees totally focused on clients makes life a lot easier.
Neuberger Berman CEO George Walker goes over the firm's recent history and talks about its recent Asia expansion.