ABN AMRO Bank N.V. ($ABN)

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm here today with Marguerite Berard, Chief Executive Officer of ABN. Marguerite, thank you for being with us this afternoon. And you know the drill by now. So let's start with the polling question.

Right. So what do you think will be the biggest driver of ABN share price performance in 2026, NII beating estimates, costs coming down faster than expected, capital distribution, further capital distribution or new M&A announcement? Let's see. We were granted the capital question. But Marguerite, I'll start with the strategic question. You've been CEO of ABN for almost a year now. And what is the achievement that you are most proud of over the past 12 months and the biggest strategic priority for the next 12 months?

Yes. So what was very important in this first year for me at ABN AMRO was, I would say, to put together our strategic plan, create the momentum. And I would say now in 2026, it's all about delivering with discipline methodically quarter after quarter, and we have actually started. So every quarter, want to talk.

Perfect. Very clear. And so since the Capital Markets Day, a lot has happened on AI, even though the Capital Markets Day was only a couple of months back. So what is your view on how ABN can benefit from artificial intelligence and how are you adapting the bank?

Yes. AI is probably in our lifetime, the most important revolution we are all going to experience. And I'm not only talking about what's happening in our companies, I'm also talking about in our societies at large. When I look at how we approach it in ABN AMRO, I think there are a few principles that you need to apply again very methodically. One is you need to have, I call it, your plumbing right, your foundations right. So you need to have a strong IT infrastructure. You need to have your data in order. You need to make sure that you have set, I would say, the right guardrails. No handcuffs, but guardrails. What am I saying that is that we've collectively hated shadow IT. We are not going to like shadow AI. You don't want to be surprised one day realizing that AI is being used in your risk model without you being aware of it, for instance. So these are a number of principles. Another important principle is that you want to, I would say, keep your options open as far as certain technological choices are concerned. For instance, it's not necessarily going to be all about large language models. In certain cases, small language models are going to be more efficient for us. World language models tomorrow may also be the right choice. So you don't necessarily want to lock yourself only with one partner. Speed of adoption is going to be crucial as well. And that very much depends, first, I would say, on the DNA of the company. And there, I'm very happy because maybe it's a Dutch thing or maybe it's also ABN AMRO, but this is a company that is tech savvy, that enjoys it, that has a genuine curiosity. I mean we are already serving 5 million retail clients with only 26 branches. So this is, I would say, in the mindset of the company. But nevertheless, we also all experience that AI comes with, I would say, a lot of curiosity, but creates also a lot of anxiety because everyone is reading the same bedtime stories. So if you go and talk to colleagues in customer care centers, just like probably you are asking yourself, people like, "Oh, am I going to be replaced tomorrow?" And myself, I'm asking when it's going to be the moment when my Supervisory Board will have an AI agent [ dummy ] CEO against which I will have to justify my choices; so you have to take this into account when you look at how you want adoption to happen in your company. And there, I'm going to give you just one example of something we did that I thought was actually quite smart. Yes. So I'll give you just one. We -- a lot of colleagues were asking for Copilot licenses. And I said, well, okay, but these licenses are expensive. So are you going to use them and so on. So I said, if you want a Copilot license, you will pay for it from your development and training budget. So this is company money, but this is a budget on which colleagues have a say in how they use it. And that was great because not only from a cost perspective, but also in a matter of weeks, we had 10,000 requests for Copilot licenses. And because people had actually decided they wanted it because this was their choice, because they had put a value on it because they're spending the money on this and not something else; they are actually using it massively. And I like that a lot because had I gone through the company saying, "Hey, AI literacy, it's really important that you all have a Copilot license, and I want you all to use it, and this is going to be part of your yearly appraisal whether or not you're using AI in your job," I would have got pushed back. So this is also the way you help the company embrace the change. And then what I also -- sorry, because I'm long, but I think it's an important topic. It's an important topic. What I think is also important is we make sure we build the right building blocks. So for instance, intelligent document processing, conversational agents, data intelligence. These are all foundations that, for instance, intelligent document processing, we first used it in our lending journey in the corporate bank, reducing the time we needed to produce a credit memo by 30%. But now we can deploy it elsewhere in the bank. Conversational agent or AI agent, Anna handles right now 150,000 client interactions per month. And what is really good is that not only you gain productivity, but you also see, for instance, improvements in client satisfaction. I'll give you an example. Now conversations we have with clients when our colleagues have a conversation on the phone with clients, well, the summary is done automatically by AI. And that means that our colleagues are actually fully engaged in the conversation. They're not multitasking, also typing the summary as they talk to the clients. And so that makes not only for beta data because our summaries are in the same format with the same data we need and more reliable, but we also measure client satisfaction improvement. So it comes with many different advantages, I think.

Thank you very much for that. And we like examples, definitely. So now I'm going to ask you about capital, given also the...

Apparently, it definitely creates a lot of interest, yes.

Yes, it certainly does. So you have about 100 basis points of excess capital pro forma for NIBC. And so how should we think about the capital part from here, in particular, in light of the statement of distribution around 100%? How can it not be higher than 100%? Should we be thinking about M&A? Or how should we think about capital distribution?

So what I also like in your question and the expectations I see here is that it means that we start our strategic plan from a strong capital position, which I view as a plus, i.e., that makes me all the more confident that the distribution policy we shared at the Capital Market Day of up to 100% of the profit we generate between '26 and '28 is actually ambitious and achievable because your question is, "Hey, why don't you go even beyond?" So well, I'd rather have you ask me this question than "Aren't you reaching too far?" So this is the first part. And this is also probably linked to the fact that at Q4, indeed, we made, I would say, significant progress in our RWA steering. This is part of also our strategic plan. So we reduced our RWA by EUR 7.7 billion. So this was also something important. You're right, NIBC will kick in probably at Q3. We are between signing and closing right now. So closing is expected at Q3, and that's between 70 and 80 basis points. So you're right to take this into account. Right now, I'm very comfortable with situation we're in. As you also know in the SSM, no bank can commit to any form of in ordinary distribution without prior approval from the ECB or you will find. So I have really no reason to go into that territory at the moment. But we're comfortable in the situation that we're in right now at the beginning of our plan.

Hopefully we go into...

Up to 100%.

And hopefully...

And at Q4, we do the assessment at Q4.

Okay. So next then about RWA efficiencies, which you already alluded to. You have a target of EUR 10 billion optimization measures, and you already delivered EUR 4 billion in Q4. So could you actually exceed the optimization measures, given that you are already quite well advanced after just 1 quarter?

So the EUR 10 billion you're referring to is especially the target we have for corporate bank. And indeed, in that area, we are moving at pace. If you look at Q4, we mobilized several important levers. One is in terms of how we steer on our portfolio. We accelerated the wind down of asset-based finance outside of the Netherlands. So that's in Germany, in France and the U.K. So that represented EUR 2 billion of RWA relief, EUR 500 million more to come, but I would say the important part has been achieved. We also keep improving the quality of that data. So if you look at, for instance, the SME support factor, we got at Q4, EUR 1 billion RWA relief on the back of that. There is probably EUR 1.5 billion to EUR 2 billion more to come. So again, we're moving at pace. But we keep the end target we shared only 4 months ago at our CMD, which is by the end of 2028, total RWA, including NIBC of 145 billion for the whole bank. So -- but we are happy with the progress we are making quarter after quarter.

Perfect. And then if we talk now about M&A, so following the announcement of the NIBC acquisition, how has the strategy on M&A evolved? Should we expect from here, maybe just small bolt-ons in Wealth Management? Or is there scope for other targets?

Yes. And I should start by saying that we don't have an M&A buffer if that relates also to your question on capital, we don't have an M&A buffer. We've recently done two moves. One is the acquisition of HAL in Germany, and we are there in the process of now integrating. So legal merger should happen in the summer, IT merger in the fall. And there, this is going according to plan in terms of planning and the synergies we expect. So this is an important moment for us because there we are creating, I would say, a strong #3 position in the German market for Wealth Management. If I look at NIBC now, we are between signing and closing. So as I mentioned, closing to happen at Q3, most likely. And basically, we are right now fully focused on making this happen and making these acquisitions a success. So this is our primary focus. So we're not looking at additional M&A. We also shared when we presented our strategy last November, what would be the criteria where we to look at M&A. So first, it would have to be a perfect fit in our five long-term ambitions that we shared, keep growing in the Dutch retail market. That's what we did, for instance, with NIBC, build a strong top 5 position in Europe in wealth and so on. So it would have to be coherent with our strategy. If it's not coherent, there's no reason to do it. It's quite evident, but nevertheless, that's what I call discipline as well. Second, it would have to be accretive. So if you look, for instance, at the acquisition of HAL, that was a return on invested capital of 15%. If you look at NIBC return on invested capital of 18%, so this is what I call accretive also for shareholders. And we also take into consideration the execution risk, low execution risk. So this is typically the characteristic you have with the HAL acquisition as well as with NIBC. So this is also something we like when we look at them. But right now, it's not on the table.

Okay. Good to hear. So if I move on then to another hot topic for ABN, which is costs and in particular, FTE reductions, which have come down by another -- almost 600 in Q4; so are you able to replace them effectively via digitalization, automation, AI? Maybe if you can give us some color. Sometimes I get questions from investors, 20% of the workforce that's massive, how do you really achieve that?

Yes. So absolutely, we shared -- when we presented our strategy, and I think we are the only European bank to did that, we shared three cost targets: Cost income, absolute cost target and FTE reduction target. And why is this FTE reduction target important is that 80% of the EUR 900 million cost savings we announced, depend on achieving this FTE reduction. So this is why I think it is also an important indication to KPI to monitor. That's one. Again, here, we are moving at pace. We -- in 2025, and that was only between Q2 and Q4, we reduced our workforce by 1,500. If you take into account the 5,200 that we've announced by the end of 2028, it represents 30% of the trajectory we shared. So we are absolutely moving at pace. How are we proceeding? Everything we shared in terms of cost savings is grounded in a business case, a business case that was fully grounded with the businesses or the functions that we are presenting it, discussed with HR, discussed with finance, but also we even had internal audit go through the figures before we do. So I can tell you that it is grounded. Second, we also make sure that we are doing it in, I would say, a smart way. So we didn't, for instance, go for a voluntary departure plan in the bank where you may lose key people in certain departments or certain profiles you don't want to lose. So the way we proceed is that we do it in a more targeted manner. We call that an RFA, request for advice, with our works council that you have in the Netherlands, one by one, we have 25 RFAs going on in the bank right now. We do it in a very partnering way, I don't know if it's the right word in English, but you see what I mean with our works council. So I'm very impressed by the maturity of the conversations we have and how we do that. We do it also by supporting the colleagues who leave the bank. So we have a very robust social plan that covers the entire time period of our strategic plan. It will expire in 2029. So basically, it means that colleagues have full visibility of -- on the financial support they get when they leave the bank, but also they get support in finding new opportunities outside of the bank. Bear in mind also that the Netherlands is a full employment and tight labor market. So -- but we support colleagues find these opportunities. The cost of the social plan is fully embedded in our financial trajectory as well. So you have EUR 400 million restructuring charge in our financial trajectory through the plan. We already booked EUR 100 million in 2025 out of this EUR 400 million. So this is, again, very, I would say, very documented happening quarter after quarter. And we are quite -- quite is too much. We are absolutely confident that we are reaching this target and moving at pace.

Perfect. And so if I stay then on the cost side of things. And if I start from Q4 reported and I remove the regulatory levies, the EUR 40 million of nonrecurring seasonal, let's call it, in Q4 and I annualize with some upside pressure, call it, from CLA coming by the summer; we still get a touch below the EUR 5.6 billion guidance for the full year. So there seems to be some upside here.

Again, I feel we set ambitious and achievable targets. So the EUR 5.6 billion cost target you mentioned for 2026, I'm confident we are going to reach it. Bear in mind, and you also mentioned it, so this is why you say, well, there is upside, yes. And at the same time, you mentioned that we will have our CLA negotiations as well. We are still -- the inflation context is still to be determined in the Netherlands based on also current geopolitical developments and so on. So there are still also uncertainties on these factors. It's why I'm, I would say, comfortable we start from a good position and again, not changing the guidance we gave only 4 months ago.

Yes. I appreciate the point of not changing the guidance, but it is my job, I guess.

No, no, I -- at the same time, the good thing in the way you're asking me a question that I remember, I think the first time you met were telling me, well, ABN AMRO is sometimes surprising us setting targets and not necessarily reaching them. So I like better that you tell me, well, you set targets, we're confident you can reach them. Can you do more? It's a change of tone, I would say, in the way we look at the bank. So I think this is a good one as well.

Right. So I'll keep on with this tone. I'll ask about NII then.

Too conservative on NII as well.

Yes, especially the curve has also changed since you gave the guidance. So can you walk us through the impact that potentially the higher short-term part of the curve would have on your replicating portfolio? And also, what are you seeing in terms of deposit mix shift? Because if you look at the Netherlands, actually, beginning of the year, the current accounts are slightly down as a mix. So yes, I'm wondering, how do all these things impact your NII?

So the guidance for commercial NII for 2026 is EUR 6.4 billion. And again, I'm not changing it. At the same time, if you had asked me the question last week, you would have told me that the forward curve was more of a headwind than a tailwind. So -- and something I've given up on doing right now is recalculating my replicating portfolio on the back of the forward curve every morning because I don't -- it's just changing too much. So let's put it this way. The EUR 6.4 billion is a guidance we are comfortable with. In terms of mix, if you look at our replicating portfolio, I would say 35% are current accounts, 47% are demand deposits and the remaining part term deposits. And we do not see a change in the mix right now in our replicating portfolio. This is -- yes, we keep the assumption for the moment.

Perfect. And in terms of loan growth, is there any area where you are seeing a pickup in demand or perhaps the opposite after what's happening in Iran?

So if we -- I would say first that the Dutch economy is in Europe, a strong resilient economy, if you benchmark it since COVID, the Netherlands have consistently had GDP growth above the EU average, as I mentioned, very good employment market, strong fiscal position, debt-to-GDP ratio of 43.7%, which is...

Remarkable in European context, yes.

Yes, given I think it's an asset for the country. So all these are, I would say, strong foundations. When I look at the mortgage market because structurally, there is housing shortage in the Netherlands, we still see it as a dynamic market in terms of house prices, but also on the demand side, less dynamic than in '25, but nevertheless, dynamic. And there, we have, again, a strong position. Our market share in new production in Q4 was 21%. That's a strong #2 position. You could say that we have a slight margin compression. Bear in mind -- however, that on mortgages, I mean, bear in mind, however, that this is also linked to the fact that we see a growing share in our -- the mortgages with we finance on mortgages that benefit from the state guarantee scheme. So there, the margins are a bit thinner. But at the same time, it's also lighter on capital RWA. So in terms of profitability, I think this is good. So I would say a strong mortgage market, 5%, 7% growth. If I look at the -- on the corporate side, I would say definitely above GDP growth, but not as dynamic as the mortgage market.

Well, already above GDP growth is something in the corporate market. Okay. So Wealth Management, you mentioned earlier the consolidation of HAL. How is that progressing? And how do you see the EBM positioning here? Because you have an ambition to get to a top 5 position in Europe. So yes, both the short-term integration and also the strategic positioning...

So as I said, in terms of planning, we are -- this is going absolutely according to plan right now, very much focused on legal merger in the summer and IT merger in the fall. I'm very -- we're very focused on that because I think these are always sensitive moments. So you want to time box this integration moment so that they don't take too long. And so there, you will primarily see the synergy benefits after the IT merger, so more in '27. And what is important for me as well is that this is a period where we remain commercially active, focused on serving our clients and so on. And this is crucial. And this is also something I'm happy with because this can be sensitive moments where we are more inward-looking than focusing on the clients. The name of the game is make sure that we are fully focused on our clients during this period. And this is going to be a good integration.

Right. Let me pause here for a second. I want to see if we have questions from the room. Okay. I'll come back to the room in 5 minutes. And in the meantime, I'll ask you a couple more. So on the Corporate Bank, we discussed briefly the portfolio optimization by 2028, but also a shift in business towards more profitable areas. So how is this going?

So this was really the main focus for Corporate Bank. So we shared very clear targets in terms of the RWA allocated to our Corporate Bank, with cap at 50% of the total RWA of the bank moving to more profitable growth. So that implied also clear choices in certain things that we would stop doing. I mentioned asset-based finance, for instance. So I think this is important. A lot of the data optimization we are doing to alleviate our RWA are also done by our Corporate Bank. So this is a positive as well. And it is, again, methodically step by step, for instance, we have corporate clients that do not have yet external ratings. We know that when we have these ratings, it alleviates the RWAs. We do it very methodically, and that's positive. We also, I would say, implement a more selective approach to our client portfolio. So what we do is for each client, when you're in a credit committee, you look at, "Hey, how -- what is the [indiscernible] of the relation -- I mean, of this operation of the relationship?" We take always a single client view. We take into account the cross-sell we have within the Corporate Bank. For instance, if we do the here, but at the same time, we can also do additional business with Global Markets. We can do additional business on advisory and so on. We, of course, take that into account, single client view, including also what we are doing with our Wealth business because something you have to -- and this is really the sweet spot of ABN AMRO, something you have to bear in mind is that in the Netherlands, 7 out of 10 companies are family-owned. And so we are really good at serving our clients on the Corporate side and on the Wealth side. So we take that into account also in the credit committee because sometimes you say, "Hey, maybe this specific loan is not as profitable as we would like to do." But at the same time, if this is also a client on the Wealth side and if we take the risk of losing the client assets, this would really not be a smart move. So we take a single client view into account in all the decisions we make. And by the way, what I'm saying about dual clients, i.e., clients we serve on the Wealth part and the Corporate part, this is true in the Netherlands, but this is also, I would say, the backbone of the economy throughout Northwestern Europe. And this is the same in the German Mittelstand. This is the same in Belgium and so on. So this is really something we do well. When I talk about this, I would say, client selection approach, it happens more over time through the course of the plan, and it happens as loans are maturing and we have the question of, "Hey, are we refinancing this loan with this client or not?" And so we do it when the loan is maturing basically. So this is more spread out across the plan, whereas the data quality optimization I was sharing with you, may happen more at the beginning of the plan.

Yes, absolutely. So we spent 30 minutes chatting, and I haven't asked yet about cost of risk because it was only 1 basis point in 2025. It has not been a topic at all for ABN recently. But the market is worried about several things. We have private credit, we have higher price of oil. Of course, you lend to corporate, which could be disrupted by AI. So how are you going through your loan book and making sure that cost of risk doesn't go up materially?

Yes. So we gave a guidance for the cost of risk throughout the course of our plan of -- and through the cycle of 10 to 15 basis points, guiding more to the low end of this range, i.e., 10 basis points. We are absolutely comfortable with that. You asked me -- you maybe didn't ask me, but you mentioned private credit as being a concern. If I look at ABN AMRO whole, total exposure to private credit, EUR 200 million. This is probably one of the lowest so far. We do have a very strong balance sheet. It's been a long time that our noncore CIB has been fully wind down. And of course, like all banks, we are right now stressing our loan portfolio with all -- with very different kind of scenarios, conflict in the Middle East ending in the short term, ending in 2 months, prolonged in the second half of the year. So we are taking all this into account. As far as Stage 3 provisioning are concerned, we do not see any concerns right now. as far as taking more, I would say, a broader approach in terms of geopolitical risk overlay and so on, this will be depending on how the situation evolves, something we take into consideration. Again, reiterating that we do not see cost of risk moving away from the guidance we gave of 10 to 15 basis points through the cycle. So a very strong balance sheet.

Yes, the EUR 200 million is particularly low.

Yes. I know it's a bit boring, but it's where we are.

And this is fund financing. So over...

It is total exposure, yes.

Can I check back with the room if we have any questions? No, I will happy to continue then. So we have gone through the P&L and the shorter-term target, let's say, so '26 and '28. And you have an ambitious plan. Cost income was at 62% underlying in '25, going down to below 55%. Yet the sector in our numbers is at 44% cost income by '28. And you mentioned that ABN is a very digital bank actually with only 26 branches. So I guess the cost income ought to be lower than that. So what is your -- what are your thoughts about the longer-term game?

So indeed -- and we do have figures for '29 and 2030 in terms of where we want to be, in terms of cost income, top line, cost base and so on. Are these figures better than the ones we have for '28? Absolutely. Are we sharing them right now? No, because we are, again, very much focused at executing what we committed to. But yes, going forward, there are absolutely no reasons for us not converging even more on our cost income target. But right now, I'm just very focused on executing what we shared already because I remember when we first shared that we would be, for instance, reducing rightsizing our FTEs by 20% people said, "Hey, that's very ambitious." We are doing it step by step, but forward-looking, is there beyond 2028 additional upside? Yes. I mean one factor, for instance, is that the full synergy of NIBC will only [ kink ] in 2029. Just to give you an example. This is not the only factor I have in mind.

Great. Okay. No, very clear. And so I have a couple of more questions. One is on the clearing business. We talked about capital as you have alone well above, but -- and we don't necessarily need to talk about disposals, but clearing seems a bit less core than the rest of your business perimeter. So how are you thinking about this business? Why is it core for ABN?

So it is true -- and that's the good thing when you -- I would say, you come from the outside, which was my case when I joined ABN AMRO is that you have absolutely no [ taboo ]. So I looked at the bank from a purely, I would say, neutral perspective, looking at each business, thinking, "Hey, what is it bringing to our business model, what is core, what is noncore?" Nothing personal, let's just be systematic. And several things I like very much about clearing. One, it is a business we are really good at. I mean maybe this is linked to our Dutch DNA, our strong Dutch root and the fact that the Dutch have -- our traders, merchants in the block. But our trading -- I mean, our clearing bank has grown with our clearing -- with our clients throughout the world. So -- and it's interesting when you come to visit us in Amsterdam. I mean, literally, our clients are really next door to the bank. This is an ecosystem that grew together. So this is a business we are good at. Second, it is also for us, very complementary to our business model. First, it's fairly countercyclical. When there is volatility, our clearing business, just like our global market activities, actually thrive. Another element is that this is a very short term -- it's a fee business, which I like to, implementing also our NII business. It's a short-term balance sheet. So you can fold it quite easily whenever you want these are short-term engagements. And so all in all, we find it quite a complementary mix to our business model. And we also have synergies we can build within the bank, for instance, using the capacities of -- and the technical capacities of clearing with our global market activities, but also serving of our Wealth business. So these are all things that we think are good thing. And very importantly, we can also sustain the growth of clearing because, of course, you always need to ask ourselves, "Hey, are we the right owner? Can we sustain the growth? This is a top 3 player in the world, can we sustain its growth over time?" And this is what we clearly also shared in our strategic plan, both in terms of liquidity, but also in terms of capital. We shared that we would be willing to allocate an additional EUR 3 billion RWA to clearing. It's not permanent. As I say, clearing has -- can fallen, but it's up to an additional EUR 3 billion. And so this is something that can absolutely fit our business model.

Very clear. I will then close with a question on European competitiveness, not about ABN, but there is a lot happening in Europe. So I'm keen to hear your thoughts when you speak with regulators. What will be your shopping? What are you asking them for?

I think it's a question that I would say, goes even beyond the banking sector. I often think that Europe's main impediment is its risk aversion because in the -- I would say it's very often when we, for instance, have stability as the main goal for the financial sector, and I fully -- I was working at the [indiscernible] at the time of the financial crisis. I vividly remember what it is to -- so don't get me wrong. I fully understand this goal. But there is something that we do not always factor in the equation, is the cost of not moving, the cost of not -- I call it the silent tax of Europe, the silent tariff of Europe, not taking enough risk and it has sort of a cumulative impact year after year of lagging behind. And so if you look, for instance, in the banking sector, you take the top 15 banks in Europe, we made the calculation between 2020 and 2024, 90% of the capital that was created by this bank has been sterilized in additional capital requirements. Maybe that makes us more stable. But at the same time, this is money that's not flowing in the economy. And right now, I think it is because we have the Draghi report in Europe. In the Netherlands, we have the [ Wennink ] report. This is a cousin of the Draghi report, basically looking at, I would say, what are the structural transitions of Europe on energy, defense, digital tech, mobility. This requires financing. And we know that the European economy is today intermediated to almost 80% by banking financing. And so when you sterilize capital, then it has its toll on the economy. It's just a fact. So how do we collectively in Europe have -- but what I like is that I also feel there is a growing awareness, which is important. We certainly don't call it deregulation in Europe because we don't like the word, but let's call it simplification so on. So I think there is this awareness. And I can only welcome the fact that we are more willing on focusing on, I would say, the risks that matter and proportionality and also making sure that we go through -- I mean, we manage to have a more perfect banking union because in fairness, it's still an imperfect banking union. Many rules are still country dependent. I mean if you look at the [ Red ] Netherlands, for instance, we have...

It's a touch small...

We have a countercyclical buffer of 2%. I mean you have many rules that are country-specific and that take also that toll on the economy. So I think the awareness that if we want a strong Europe, we also need a strong financial sector and what it implies, I think, is very welcome. Let's see what comes out of it.

Thank you very much, Marguerite.

Thank you very much.