Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft (DBK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Deutsche Bank's 2022 Investor Deep Dive. My name is Ioana Patriniche, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations. I will be hosting the Q&A today, and we'll provide you with the key aspects of how to interact with us during our event. It's, of course, would have been the greater pleasure to see you in person today. But sadly, once again, it is not possible. Nevertheless, we will do our best to make this event as informative and interactive as possible. The event will comprise 3 presentations hosted by Christian Sewing, Chief Executive Officer; and James von Moltke, Chief Financial Officer. The slides and transcript of the first presentation are available on our Investor Relations website on a dedicated Investor Deep Dive 2022 page. Shortly before the second and third presentations, we will upload the respective slides and transcript on our website. For ease, we have simplified the charts you will see on your screen. But for the full details, please refer to the uploaded versions on our web page. Following our presentations, and after a short break, we will start the Q&A at around 3:30 p.m. CET when you will be able to ask questions. I will provide you with more details on how to ask a question at a later point. And before we get started, I do need to remind you of the following. The future is uncertain, and every presentation contains forward-looking statements, which may develop differently than we would currently expect. But now let's start with our event.

Good afternoon, and welcome to our Investor Deep Dive. It has been 15 months since our last IDD. And our transformation and the strategic objectives we set out in July 2019, are approaching completion. Today, James and I would like to provide you with an overview of our achievements to date, our progress and path towards our 2022 targets and our strategy for the years to 2025. Let me begin by saying, this will not be a revolution but an evolution of our successful compete-to-win strategy. Deutsche Bank today is a different bank than it was 3 years ago. We are much more resilient with prudent risk management, a strong balance sheet, materially improve controls and sustainable profitability. In 2021, we achieved our highest net profit in a decade and put the cost of our transformation almost completely behind us. And in the last year of our transformation, we will continue to execute on our agenda with the same discipline we demonstrated up to now. Unfortunately, these days are dominated by the war in Ukraine. We condemn Russia's aggression, which violates international law in the strongest possible terms. Our thoughts are with the people in Ukraine who are suffering and are in fear for their lives and those of their loved ones. First and foremost, at Deutsche Bank, we embrace our responsibility in defending our democracies and our freedom. Standing united is the best that democratic world can do to safeguard, stable world economy and long-term prosperity. We, therefore, support the decisions of the German government and its allies. This war brings new uncertainties both geopolitically and economically. We see these uncertainties affecting our clients' businesses and households and also reflected in financial markets. Consequently, it is inevitable that what we present today is subject to certain caveats, give the latest geopolitical disruptions. So far, our results this year show that we are well on track. We finished February with a very good result following an already very strong channel. And at this point in time, I'm therefore confident that we achieved what was needed at the start of the year to meet our ambitious targets for 2022. In particular, the target of 8% return on tangible equity. However, nobody can say for sure, how events will unfold and what the potential consequences might be for the economy and markets for our clients and the banks. It is, therefore, even more important that we provide you with the transparency on our current exposure to Russia. As we disclosed, the risk to our bank are very much contained and under control. Our direct exposure to Russia is not material. With EUR 1.4 billion of gross loans exposures, EUR 0.6 billion net roughly 0.3% of our total loan book. In addition, a significant proportion of our derivative exposure to Russian counterparties has been unwound and we are in a net payer position to Russian banks. Secondly, we benefit from our first class and proven risk management and our long-term experience in modeling and analyzing secondary and tertiary risks. As a result, we are not only already started to derisk in Russia in the last years but positioned ourselves to hedge against potential contagion FX. Looking ahead, we will, of course, continue to employ the utmost rigor in managing our risks. At the same time, let me say, when, if not now, do we have to demonstrate stability and leadership and be there for our clients as their global house bank, operating out of a strong German home market and as part of the solution. At today's Investor Deep Dive, we will present how we want to get there. Our aim is that by the end of this day, we will have convinced you across 3 dimensions. First, we start from a position of financial strength and there is a differentiated opportunity for us to grow. Second, we expect to produce operating leverage, not only as we leave our transformation costs behind but also with further efficiencies to come. And third, we expect to increase our tangible equity whilst enhancing distributions to our shareholders. This translates into updated financial targets for our bank. With an annual revenue growth rate of 3.5% to 4.5%, we aspire to become a EUR 30 billion revenue bank by 2025. We target a competitive cost-to-income ratio of less than 62.5% in 2025. This would result in a return on tangible equity of greater than 10% by that year, exceeding our cost of capital. And lastly, we aim to distribute EUR 8 billion to our shareholders for the years 2021 to 2025 subject to achieving our plans. So let me briefly outline today's agenda. James and I will start with a summary of our path to achieving our compete-to-win targets because these achievements build a strong foundation for the next phase we are now embarking on. And the second part, I will present our plans and ambitions for this new phase before James explains the financial details of these plans. And we have reserved plenty of time for you to ask questions at the end. But now let's start with the mark-to-market assessment of what we have accomplished since the start of our transformation. [Presentation]

Three years ago, we set out a clear set of objectives to turn Deutsche Bank into a sustainably profitable organization. We knew we had significant hurdles to overcome and that the transformation wouldn't be easy, but we were prepared. We were ready to execute. And as we stand here today, we are pleased with our achievements to date. And as James will take you through in more detail later, our execution continues as we work towards our 2022 targets. As said, the events of the past few weeks have been unsettling and have increased uncertainty in financial markets with unclear consequences for the economy. However, the solid foundations we have built, combined with our leadership and discipline, give me confidence that we are and will remain a well-placed and stable partner to help our clients. We have seen this also in the first 2 months of this year. This demonstrates that the hard work over the last few years has set us on course to deliver our 2022 targets. Before I move into the detail, let me also take this opportunity to thank all our employees across the globe who have helped get us to where we are today, especially in tackling the challenges of recent years while remaining focused on our clients' needs. Back in 2019, we said we had to stabilize and transform the bank. Simple words, with the immense effort and determination required to deliver on that. But that is exactly what we have done. We took decisive actions which enabled us to stabilize the platform and reposition our franchise and enable a return to growth. Today, I'm pleased to be able to report that we are on track. Our financial results have improved. But the cultural transformation that we are delivering within the bank is just as important. And we will continue to learn, evolve and develop because the culture of a business never stands still. One example that we put a lot of focus on is our control environment. Controls will remain an area where we will always need to invest as this protects our license to operate, so it will always remain a management priority. We remain committed to the principles, which have guided our success to date, namely our client-centric approach, prudent risk management and our disciplined allocation of capital. It is these principles, which have enabled us to transform the business to the one we present to you today. And we believe we are now positioned to move forward with confidence and to deliver return for our shareholders. We are executing every single 1 of the 5 key actions we have announced in 2019. We have created faultline-centric businesses built on strong market positions and with attractive growth potential. We have exited businesses and resized others. This created the resources and the financial flexibility we needed to unlock the growth potential of our core businesses. We looked at our cost base from top to bottom, and we will continue to do so as we look to self-fund investments in the future. We have adjusted and reduced the adjusted cost by EUR 3.6 billion, excluding transformation charges and Prime Finance since 2018. And as you will hear later today, we have clear plans to reduce them further. At the same time, we have maintained on enhanced our operational and control capabilities. We continue to invest in the business in growth areas, in our control environment and in our people. The Capital Release Unit has helped us not only free up capital and reduce costs. Equally important, it has enabled our core business to focus on their clients and the growth agenda. And delivery on our transformation is hitting the bottom line. I'm extremely proud that we were able to self-fund our transformation and that we can start returning capital to shareholders just as we promised in 2019. 2021 was a decisive year for Deutsche Bank. We achieved a profit before tax of EUR 3.4 billion and a net profit of EUR 2.5 billion, our best results in a decade. Our cost-income ratio has fallen from 108% in 2019 to 85% for the group or 79% in the core bank. The current year has started with a preliminary profit before tax of EUR 1.18 billion including the planned bank levy. This translates into a return on tangible equity above our targets, making us confident in our 2022 trajectory. Of course, we remain very mindful that the tragedy in Ukraine has the potential to disrupt markets. However, as mentioned at the beginning, and as James will outline later, we have very limited direct exposure and a very strong risk management. Now let's look at each business unit, starting with the Corporate Bank. We have achieved underlying compound annual revenue growth of 4% since 2018. We are making good progress with loan volumes up 7% and good fee income growth against the backdrop from significant interest rate headwinds, which we now expect to neutralize. We have over EUR 100 billion of deposits covered by repricing agreements and resulting in a revenue run rate of over EUR 400 million per year. Our increased focus on client solutions has fostered cross-divisional collaboration which gives us a competitive advantage in the market. We are winning because of our global footprint, our leading position in Germany and with the new products and services that we are offering. All this is translating into a significant improvement in underlying profitability. The Corporate Bank has had a good start to the year with preliminary unaudited revenues of EUR 950 million in January and February. Looking to the year-end, we are targeting a post-tax return on tangible equity in line with the target outlined at the Investor Deep Dive in December 2020. The Investment Bank has certainly exceeded our expectations. By sticking closely to our plan, it is now delivering sustainable revenues and profits. This has translated into sevenfold growth in pretax profits over 2 years, from EUR 500 million for the full year 2019 to EUR 3.7 billion in 2021. Our revenues have increased by 27% since 2018. This was driven by the transformation of our FIC platform, increased client intensity, growing market share and returning clients. We are there to support our clients and are one of the few truly global financing powerhouses. This is exemplified by an 80 basis point increase in market share of business with target clients in origination and advisory, and we see further potential. We firmly believe the improved operating environment, coupled with rating upgrades by 3 leading agencies is making it easier for clients to do business with us. We have reduced funding costs by EUR 500 million and the cost base by around EUR 600 million. Preliminary unaudited revenues in the first 2 months of the year were EUR 2.16 billion, exceeding the very strong start we recorded last year. We continue to aim for a post-tax return of tangible equity in line with our 2020 IDD targets. The Private Bank started its transformation by focusing on cost and efficiency. We have reduced our workforce by about 4,300, EUR 700 million of adjusted costs, excluding transformation charges have been stripped out since 2018. Although we have reduced our branch network by closing more than 350 branches since 2018, we have been investing in client-facing personnel, particular in the International Private Bank. Business volumes are constantly growing as our focus on target lines has further sharpened. We originated approximately EUR 40 billion of net new client loans and seen approximately EUR 50 billion of net inflows in assets under management since 2018. Both business in the private bank are now well positioned for growth and demonstrated that in the first 2 months of the year with preliminary unaudited revenues of EUR 1.44 billion. Underlying compound annual revenue growth of approximately 5% since 2018, combined with the moderation of interest rate headwinds should enable us to achieve further revenue and profit growth and return to tangible equity in line with our previously communicated target. Asset Management is delivering solid returns, growing assets, launching new products and cementing its position as a European champion. It steadily grew assets under management at a 12% compound annual growth rate since 2018. There were EUR 48 billion of net inflows last year alone and over EUR 100 billion in the last 3 years with growth driven by both passive and high-margin asset classes as well as new product launches. Its cost-income ratio declined by 18 percentage points and efficiency measures have been implemented with rigorous discipline since it started operating as a stand-alone business. And we see it bright for further expansion, having earned preliminary revenues of EUR 440 million until the end of February. With an anticipated return on tangible equity of over 20% and stable revenues and profits, we see 2022 to be the springboard for future growth. As you can see, our businesses are in a very good shape. All of them are in line or even ahead of their plans. We have potential to grow as we have shown it in the first 2 months of the year. That said, it is hard to predict the impact of the current crisis on our first quarter performance. Let me now hand you over to James to take you through the decisive actions we have implemented over the past 3 years and the implications for our future performance.

Thank you, Christian. Good afternoon, and thank you for your time today. I will explain the financial impact that the changes Christian has talked about, are having on the business. Before we do that, let me offer some context from my perspective. As Christian said, we exited noncore businesses, reduced risk-weighted assets and leverage exposure, cut costs and focus on our strengths. We needed to improve controls, foster our relationships with regulators and improve our culture in all a complete overhaul. The result is the Deutsche Bank you see today, confident but humble, ambitious but realistic, focused and profitable. The execution discipline and management focus that we have developed across the bank over the past several years, are paying dividends beyond what you see in our current results. This has laid the foundation for our next chapter, which Christian will speak about a bit later. Let me now turn to the capital release unit. We exited nonstrategic businesses and wound down legacy portfolios. In fact, our Capital Release Unit has performed ahead of expectations. We reduced risk-weighted assets by 61% and leverage exposure by 86%, outperforming our targets and doing so 1 year in advance. The derisking added over 50 basis points to our common equity Tier 1 capital ratio which we refer to as our CET1 ratio. This balance sheet reduction has been achieved by exiting noncore businesses like prime brokerage and through portfolio reduction actions, particularly in the noncore rates book. We achieved this deleveraging while incurring significantly lower exit costs than we originally modeled. We are now much better positioned. In addition, the Capital Release Unit has helped us drive down our cost base by achieving over EUR 2 billion of cost savings since 2018. Cost reduction has been a key element of our transformation program. Our total noninterest expenses were EUR 21.5 billion in 2021, including EUR 1.3 billion of transformation charges and reimbursable Prime Finance expenses compared to EUR 23.5 billion in 2018. Adjusted costs, excluding these items as well as litigation and restructuring and severance costs were EUR 19.3 billion, a reduction of EUR 3.6 billion or 16% from 2018, despite a modest FX headwind. We will continue our cost discipline and are laser-focused on executing the initiatives underway. We are not done, and there is more we can do. I wanted to spend just a minute giving you some color on the impact of the transformation charges we have incurred over the past few years on our run rate expenses. We recently updated our estimate of cumulative transformation-related effects between 2019 and 2022 to EUR 8.6 billion and have already put behind us EUR 8.4 billion or 97% of that total. Of this amount, EUR 4.5 billion represents restructuring and other charges, excluding DTA and goodwill impairments. These are delivering over EUR 1.6 billion of annual cost or amortization benefits. All our transformation initiatives are delivering sustainable cost reductions. Compensation and benefits costs, real estate and technology costs account for the bulk of the savings, and I will say a few words on each of these. Firstly, our workforce is not only smaller, but more efficient and effective. We reduced headcount by 10% and reduced compensation costs by over 12% or around EUR 1 billion. Our focus was not only on the size of our workforce, but also on the location, seniority and structure of our organization. In all, 28,000 of our staff left the bank over the past 3 years, allowing us to reshape our human capital as we rehired in strategic roles and locations. As we have discussed on our quarterly earnings calls, we have internalized significantly more work into lower-cost locations than we anticipated when we embarked on our restructuring. This has not only enabled us to reduce costs but also to enhance controls and operational stability, although it has resulted in a larger full-time equivalent workforce, than originally indicated. At the same time, we rightsized our workforce outside our delivery hubs and increased headcount in client-facing roles as well as investing in IT and control functions. We significantly repositioned the workforce to ensure we have the right team in place to execute on our business plans going forward. We still have roughly EUR 800 million of provisions on the balance sheet to facilitate further plan changes. There is more to do, but these changes have already helped in the cultural transformation Christian talked about. With the significant change in our real estate footprint over the past 3 years, we are also well prepared for the future of work. Around 2/3 of our employees are expected to adopt a hybrid working model. We have reduced square meterage by 30% and have taken EUR 300 million out of the cost base since 2018. At the same time, we have modernized and enhanced our estate. New locations such as our Columbus Circle offices in New York, symbolize the rejuvenation of our company and demonstrably reenergize our people, especially after the isolation of the last 2 years for many of us. Our real estate costs are expected to be EUR 1.3 billion for the year, and we expect these to fall further. Some of the most significant steps we've taken have been in our technology estate. We have written off legacy systems and reduced excess costs. The German IT migration, the FIC reengineering program, the ongoing transfer of DWS to a stand-alone infrastructure along with the move to the cloud and the other measures are enabling us to operate more efficiently and to improve client experience. These actions have led to approximately EUR 1.4 billion of software impairments and additional charges. From the German IT platform, we now expect annual savings of about EUR 300 million in the private bank to be achieved by the end of 2025. And I am pleased to report that the test migrations are progressing to plan. The extended time line compared to our earlier expectation is mainly driven by higher cash spend leading to higher software amortization starting this year. Together with the other initiatives I've cited and many more smaller programs, these actions have enabled us to move more quickly to decommission our legacy estate, accelerate our transition to cloud infrastructure and move activities to more efficient platforms. Effectively, this has reduced our run rate technology cost by over EUR 400 million, while freeing up resources for investments into capabilities like cloud-driven applications and a significantly improved data environment. As we increase volume throughput, the full benefit of transformation, both operational and financial, will shine through. Internal route controls remain a priority, and we continue to improve. We have implemented and are continuing to embed new processes and systems to reinforce and enhance our control environment, and we believe it has become much better. In line with our plan, we have invested EUR 3 billion in our control functions since 2019. Much of the improvement is driven by a change in culture and leadership across the group. Today, we have greater transparency and a willingness to speak up if things don't look right. We have further to go on this journey, but the improvements are visible across various domains such as compliance, audit, anti-financial crime and financial and operational risk management. All of this is making us more stable and resilient. Disciplined capital management has been another core element of our transformation. Turning first to the CET1 ratio. We are immensely gratified that we've been able to self-fund our transformation as promised 3 years ago despite the known and unknown headwinds that lay ahead at that point. Together with the higher CET1 ratio starting point, the combination of EUR 5 billion of core bank capital generation and the net benefits of nearly EUR 1.6 billion from the capital release unit have enabled us to offset EUR 8.2 billion of capital ratio impact from higher regulatory requirements and transformation costs. As a result, we have delivered on our commitment to keep our capital ratio above 12.5% throughout the period and fund our transformation from existing capital resources. Let me now turn to capital allocation. At the end of 2018, the activities represented by the Capital Release Unit after our resegmentation, accounted for 21% of our tangible equity deployment. Capital released from asset sales, business disposals and the wind down of legacy positions has been reallocated to the core businesses in line with the plans we laid out in 2019. We increased the share of average allocated capital to the stable businesses of the Private Bank, Corporate Bank as well as asset management to 45% in 2021 on our way to the ambitions we set for 2022. We are putting capital to work to support clients and generate returns for shareholders, not to cover legacy trades. Strong risk management has been a critical discipline for Deutsche Bank, including through the transformation period, which included a global pandemic. We have a consistent approach to risk with disciplined risk management frameworks and a conservative profile. This enables us to navigate the inevitable cycles with modest provisions across the period rising only at the height of the pandemic, but remaining low relative to peers. At around EUR 500 million, equivalent to 12 basis points of average loans, provision for credit losses in 2021 were down 71% and at the lower end of our forecasts. And we have EUR 4.8 billion of allowances for credit losses on the balance sheet. As of today, we expect a modest increase in 2022 to 20 basis points of loans from the very low levels of last year. We have a highly developed risk management capability based on a strong risk appetite framework, tight teamwork between our first and second lines of defense and supported by a modernized technology infrastructure. Let's spend just a moment on risk management in relation to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. As you will have seen in our recent disclosures, we have very manageable exposure to the Russian Federation. Over the last few years, we had already significantly reduced our local footprint and accordingly, our loan exposure is just EUR 1.4 billion or 0.3% of the group's total loan book. On a net basis, taking guarantees and offshore collateral into account, our exposure is only EUR 600 million. Regarding market risk, we had already reduced our direct exposures before current events unfolded and have further reduced since then. But it is not just financial risks we monitor. We are also carefully evaluating cyber risks and the multifaceted implications of the different sanctions that have been imposed. While no one can predict what the longer-term implications of the current conflict will be, we're confident that the risk management practices and controls we have in place are doing their job. With that, let me hand back to Christian, who will discuss our wider management agenda.

Thank you, James. I would now like to return to our broader management agenda that we introduced back in 2019 and which remains core until today. There are 5 key elements to it. Let's start with client centricity. We have established 4 strong businesses centered around the needs of our clients. Client centricity takes effort. It starts with the mindset and attitude at the most senior levels of the organization. That's why we institutionalized a client coverage model across our group management committee, systematically tracking all engagement with our top clients. And of course, this mindset has filtered through the organization, materially improving client dedication and cross-selling. At the next level, we'll be further evolving our bank into a truly client-led organization across front office and infrastructure. I will come back to this later. The next management priority is sustainability. We identified sustainability as a nonnegotiable element of our license to operate and a significant business opportunity early on. One of our major targets was to facilitate EUR 200 billion in financing and investment by 2025. We now feel confident that we can achieve it already at the end of this year. The fact that we have repeatedly overachieved the targets we set ourselves is a testament to our capability in this area. And no doubt, we materially won market share. In addition to that, we have achieved many other goals which has supported our sustainability rating improvements during 2021. We have strengthened our policies and commitments. We have joined Net Zero banking alliance as a founding member and have already published the carbon footprint of our corporate loan portfolio last week. And we have made good progress across our organization as expressed by our achievement when it comes to diversity and inclusion. I will talk about our further ambitions in a few minutes. My next point is leadership. At our Annual General Meeting in 2018, I said that we need to reinstate pride working for Deutsche Bank, pride in working together for a joint course and performing at the top of our ability. We have come a long way since then. During our transformation, mood and morale have constantly grown. And I'm deeply grateful that more and more employees are feeling committed to the bank and support our strategy. 88% of our staff embrace our strategy and their contribution to it, with commitment levels at the highest since 2012. Employees feel more valued and have more trust in our leadership team. The clarity of our strategy and our business success have been important drivers of this development. Turning to risk management. This is about being rigorous, disciplined and ensuring we minimize risk effectively, as James outlined earlier. We have created a strong track record by utilizing our framework, our technology and analytics supported by a strong organizational structure. Our particular strengths, next to our ability to manage primary risk is our ability to steer a secondary and tertiary risk, holistic portfolio management, conservative underwriting standards, diversified assets as well as active hedging provide us with a high degree of protection also in an unexpected crisis situations like the one we're experiencing right now. Finally, in technology, we need to be modern, fast, reliable and fit for purpose. Our partnership with Google Cloud is essential not only to modernize our technology estate, but also to develop new solutions for our clients. I will speak more about this in my strategic outlook. As you can see, we have made good progress to date. So let's now look forward. In these next slides, James will bridge our 2021 outcome to our 2022 targets.

As we told you in January, 2021 represented the step-off we needed towards our 2022 targets. While the war in Ukraine has introduced a higher degree of uncertainty, we have positioned our company to deliver a return on tangible equity after tax of 8%, and we continue to work towards our cost-income ratio target. Our CET1 ratio will remain well above 12.5%, and we've had a good start to the year across the businesses, and all core metrics are headed in the right direction based on preliminary results. Including the planned bank levies, our cost-income ratio for the first 2 months of the year stood at around 74% or if we prorated the bank levy plan across the year, the ratio would have been 64%. The ROTE on a year-to-date basis would exceed our full year targets for both the group and the core bank even without adjusting the bank levy treatment. Our CET1 stood at 13.2% at the end of February. However, as we have mentioned on our fourth quarter earnings call, we do expect our CET1 ratio to decline with some variability during the year, for example, from pending regulatory decisions on RWA models. We still expect to finish the year with a CET1 ratio of 13% or higher, and in any case, above 12.5%, consistent with our target. Adjusting for ECB cash, our leverage ratio stood at the end of February at 4.5%, but we also expect some variability during the year. Our leverage ratio target for the end of 2022 remains approximately 4.5% fully loaded. The recent geopolitical events have unsettled markets and remain vigilant in managing our risks. However, it is hard to predict the impact of the current crisis on our first quarter performance. Nevertheless, we continue to monitor the situation closely and aim to be a source of stability for our clients and customers, as Christian outlined earlier. Let me take a moment to walk you through the bridge from our 4% post-tax return on tangible equity in 2021 to our target of 8% in 2022. As you can see, we expect it to improve as a result of revenue growth, further cost reduction and a significant decline of transformation effects, partially offset by higher provisions for credit losses in the core bank. The Capital Release Unit will further reduce its drag on profitability. So the path is clear. Let me outline how each business can point to underlying improvements supporting our 2022 targets, being through continued lending expansion and fee income growth as well as benefits from deposit repricing in the corporate bank or savings from cost -- strategic cost levers and further business volume growth and strategic initiatives in the private bank and a more benign rate environment will support revenue growth in both of these businesses. Increasing client engagement, targeted investments and the continued development in technology, client solutions and our people will underpin the investment bank performance. Continued delivery of ESG capabilities and sustainable investment solutions to clients and further organic growth in key product areas will drive asset management. Across the businesses, there are encouraging indicators, which we would hope to continue for the rest of the year. Last year, our performance was on or ahead of our plans in all 4 of our businesses, even though it was impacted by about EUR 800 million of interest rate headwinds as well as the impact from the BGH ruling. Revenues were up in all areas because we succeeded in growing business volumes. Based on current FX rates, we foresee revenues to be in a range of between EUR 26 billion to EUR 27 billion for 2022. Amongst our divisions, the main contributors will be the corporate bank and the private bank. Furthermore, we expect the impact of the changes in interest rates along with the annualization of deposit pricing actions to swing to the positive in 2022. And the improvements in our product offering and service levels will sustain our underlying business growth. We are off to a good start in the first 2 months of the year, with preliminary unaudited revenues of EUR 4.89 billion for the group. All 4 core businesses are ahead of last year's quarter-to-date revenues underlining the growth trajectory. Of course, the result for the quarter is dependent on market developments in the coming weeks. We expect revenue growth to be a major building block while working towards our target cost-income ratio of 70% this year, contributing to 5% in total. Having 97% of the transformation-related charges already absorbed by the end of 2021, will result in a further improvement of 5 percentage points as these effects fall away dramatically. The benefit of prior investments will also lead to a further reduction in the ratio. Combined with annual savings in our adjusted costs, we expect this to lead to another 3 percentage points improvement for the full year from adjusted costs. These reductions are expected to fall relatively evenly between compensation and noncompensation costs. As I alluded to earlier, both real estate and remuneration costs are expected to fall further, allowing us to reap the benefits of us rightsizing our workspace and our workforce. Further benefits are expected to come from technology efficiencies this year and in the future. And we also see significant reductions from the Capital Release Unit, driven by lower compensation costs and infrastructure allocations where the savings are locked in already. We will continue to reinvest much of the efficiency savings to drive future growth. And Christian and I will talk to that in the sessions to come. With adjusted costs of EUR 3 billion, excluding bank levies in the quarter to date, we are currently on track against the glide path we outlined on the Q4 earnings call, partially reflecting significant FX movements we've seen this year. Our targets are ambitious, but we believe we have established the right levers to pull. So let me hand you back to Christian.

Thank you, James. You have just heard that the focus and discipline that we are applying is reflected in our financial results. We have built a virtuous circle for future growth. It starts with having a clear strategic direction. This, in turn, needs to be implemented with focus and discipline. It drives client trust, results in an increased share of wallet with more clients and a more sustainable performance. We benefit from lower funding costs as our ratings improve, all of which is driving an increase in our profitability, enabling us to restart dividends and share buybacks. But as I said at the beginning, it is our people that are making this possible and again, a massive thank you to them from me and the entire leadership team of Deutsche Bank. With that, we look forward to speaking to you at our next section on our strategy to 2025. [Break]

Welcome to the second part, which will be about our strategy for the years to come. James and I have described how our management team stabilized our bank. How we rightsized, then transformed it, how we invested heavily to modernize our platforms to enable growth and how we made our bank resilient. In other words, we have found our balance. We know that we have a strategy that brings the strength of all 4 businesses to our clients with firm routes in Germany and a strong presence in Europe, Asia and the Americas. And we demonstrated in 2020 and 2021 that we are growing and taking market share. The resilience, the positive momentum and the support from our clients put us in a good position as we enter the next phase for Deutsche Bank, a face that will be focused on growth and efficiency and on self-funding our investments, a phase where we expect key global economic and societal themes to play to our strengths. We are on a long-term journey to drive shareholder value. Phase 1 is complete. So it's time to talk about our plans for the next 3 years and our ambition for the longer term. That's what I will do in the next 45 minutes. We showed you our virtuous circle earlier, and I'm confident that we can continue along and reinforce this circle in coming years. Having built a strong foundation, our focus is on supporting our clients. For us, that means primarily helping them to get through the current crisis. In the long term, however, the aim is, of course, to grow together with them. And in our view, the outlook is good. Given the overall prospects for the industry, external consultants and markets experts estimate that the expected revenue growth for a bank with our business mix would be just under 3% annually. We believe the strength of what we have to offer alongside our clients' changing needs gives us the unique opportunity to grow faster than the market. We believe our clients want a bank that can be there and deliver results for them in a complex world. We are determined to be this bank and take advantage of these opportunities, while at the same time, maintaining our strict cost discipline to further increase efficiency. In fact, we have already secured EUR 2.7 billion in transformation costs, CRU costs and other nonrecurring effects, which will fall away compared to 2021. This combination can drive significant operating leverage. Consequently, increased profitability would enable us to build up capital. We aim to organically generate tangible equity of over EUR 20 billion by 2025. We plan to distribute roughly EUR 8 billion to our shareholders and reinvest the balance into those areas where we expect it to deliver value-accretive growth, particular in our stable business. By deploying capital to our business, we expect to have the capacity to become a EUR 30 billion revenue bank and lift our return on tangible equity to more than 10%. And thus, exceed our cost of capital for the first time in years. When we invest in our business, we want to do this in a targeted manner and with a long-term view. This is because we now already have the third phase of our strategy beyond 2025 in mind. And we need to be prepared for developments in our industry up to the end of the decade, including European consolidation and digital transformation. Again, we look forward to these long-term developments with confidence because we have both a strong foundation and the goal of becoming a global house bank, the global house bank of choice. This mission has been in our DNA since our very first days back in 1870, when we started to accompany German companies abroad. Today, we serve corporates, severance, institutions, retail clients and high net worth individuals around the world, and it is our aspiration to be their global house bank. We have already been moving in this direction over the past 2 years. Now we want to live it to the full. As the world becomes increasingly complex, our clients want an integrated bank as their first point of contact in all financial matters. A bank that understands their needs, building on a long-term and holistic partnership. A bank that offers a global network and first-class local expertise with on-the-ground presence in almost 60 countries worldwide. A bank that can advise them, help them manage risk and has a strong balance sheet to enable financing. A bank that works in an agile manner, cross-divisionally and is client-centric. A bank that has a sophisticated product suite and first-class digital platforms. Deutsche Bank wants to be exactly that. Being our clients' house bank is our mission, and this mission energizes our people and make them feel proud. Despite the current uncertainties and possible repercussions on the economy, we believe that the long-term fundamentals of Germany and our leading position in our home market are a clear advantage. Germany has great strengths. It has the world's fourth highest GDP and an excellent position in markets across the globe. It is Europe's most stable, major economy with comparatively low levels of debt and credit default rates. And above all, Germany has many world-leading companies that displayed great resilience in times of global uncertainties. Such an economy needs a bank that is just as global and as strong as its corporates, a domestic bank with a global mindset and franchise that can support corporate Germany globally. But also act as an intermediary for foreign companies and investors attached and attracted by our country's economic strengths. Our clients want an alternative to U.S. banks, not only in Germany and in Europe, but also in the Americas and Asia. Certainly, the war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia are very likely to affect German companies. Yes, there will be adjustments, but Russia accounts for only 2.3% of German exports. And as just described, German companies and the government have the best prerequisites for overcoming crisis. With our position, we stand ready to support them in these volatile times with financing, risk management and investments. Over the past 3 years, we have strengthened our position among German corporates significantly, reinforced by establishing our corporate bank in 2019, and we are determined to further increase our market share in a growing market. But we are not only strong in the corporate sector, as biggest Private Bank in Germany with a leading advisory and investment offering, we have a unique position to leverage Germany's strengths. And we can provide savers with a global view of investment opportunities. We see ourselves as a strong partner to the German government and public sector when it is needed. We demonstrated this during the COVID crisis, and we are determined to do so again in these uncertain times. We believe that positioning ourselves as our clients first call bank is our way to get there in time and with holistic shifts. Market shares and wealth are expected to be redistributed globally. We expect 3 key drivers to shape the coming decade: firstly, changes in the macroeconomic environment will materially impact corporates, investors and also public finances. This needs active management. Secondly, the climate crisis is forcing all of us to transform to a sustainable economy, which implies huge investment and financing needs. And finally, rapid technological progress in all areas presents opportunities, but also poses big challenges to our clients. We need to navigate this. We have the advisory capacity and product expertise in all 4 businesses to find answers to these major trends for our clients, and importantly, we are seeing the benefit of cross-business collaboration increasing. That should help us to gain market share and grow stronger than the overall industry. Let me take a closer look at each of these 3 themes and how we, as Deutsche Bank, can support our clients. As we have all seen in the past few weeks, geopolitics become more and more important, and apart from the tragic human toll, this will undoubtedly have an influence on monetary policy, inflation and trade flows. We must expect that uncertainty and volatility will remain high, not only due to the geopolitical situation, but also as the unprecedented phase of fiscal and monetary expansion comes to an end, and as governments face less scope for action given their high debt levels. As a result, we see private debt and financing gaining in importance either via the capital market or via banks. With our balance sheet strengths, and yes, the best capital market access in Europe, we can provide both. At the same time, we observed globalization, and we are witnessing a regionalization and fragmentation of global supply chains. The solution requires tailored advice on the ground, which only banks like us can provide globally. And finally, the reversal of population growth is predicted to accelerate significantly in coming decades with consequences for already strained labor markets, pension systems and wealth distribution. We believe all this should result in significant growth potential for us, considering we can integrate our first-class risk management increasingly into our client dialogue. We plan to further strengthen our advisory propositions across businesses to help clients secure their competitive positions, protect assets and build wealth. We intend to expand lending and financing capacities needed to offset the negative impact of disruptive markets, and we aim to continue investing in our global network to be there for our clients wherever value is being created, in particular, in our growth regions like Asia. And we are driving this across and with the help of all 4 businesses, truly demonstrating our global house bank capabilities. We also consider ourselves well positioned for the global economy shift towards sustainability and net zero. This is one of the biggest challenges of our times for governance, corporates and banks. And why the repercussions of the Russian innovation of Ukraine will have significant consequences on the energy markets, we nonetheless are deeply convinced that this generational trend is irreversible. In our view, being a Germany-based bank is here an advantage. The German government is among the most ambition in accelerating the transition, and German corporations have the technologies that will enable the green transformation. We are the ones standing ready to finance it. We have the ambition to emerge as one of the winners in the industry given our position in ESG. We have embarked on the path of sustainability for our whole bank, and I personally chair our Sustainability Committee, where we take the decisions to achieve our strategic goals. We have a comprehensive ESG product and service offering, ranging from ESG-linked bonds and loans to derivative products and specialized project financing. We can export this credibility globally. The extensive ESG expertise across our business and infrastructure functions as well as our ESG presence in the Americas and APAC should position us for growth. Let me describe our plans in more detail. We aim to make our ESG business scalable and trackable while further strengthening our advisory capacity. For this, we plan investments in our reporting system, training of our people as well as product development. We intend to share details of our long-term investment plan and our sustainability deep dive in the autumn. At the center of our strategy is the support of our clients' transition. We are now focusing on a holistic and continuous dialogue with our corporate and with our private clients. We aim to further strengthen our risk management and product capacity. As I already said during our first sustainability deep dive last year, while there is public pressure to terminate certain client relationships, we will first and foremost try to support our clients in accelerating their sustainability transition. We are convinced that there is a huge potential for deepening the relationship with our clients and achieving the net zero target at the same time. All of this is expected to lead to tangible volumes and revenue gains. We have raised our ambition several times in the last 2 years, and yes, we are doing it again today. After having facilitated EUR 157 billion of sustainable financing and investment from the beginning of 2020 till the end of 2021, we are confident that we can reach EUR 200 billion well before the year-end, and this does not include DWS ambitions and goals. From 2023 on, we set ourselves an annual target of EUR 100 billion of financing and investments as we aim to increase continuously ESG lending and financing, capital markets issuances and investments. In other words, we plan to have facilitated at least EUR 0.5 trillion in financing and investments by 2025. And while I am a risk manager and thus careful by nature, I must say, for me, this is a rather conservative target. Conservative because we do not have any assumptions yet for transition financing and any market gain shares in that number. Let me briefly talk about ESG revenues given that some of you have started to make assumptions for these. While we do not publish quarterly ESG revenues, we would like to give you some long-term guidance. We are confident that our volume target would translate into ESG revenues of around EUR 1.5 billion by 2025, corresponding to an average annual growth of above 20%. We are often asked if these ESG revenues are substituting traditional banking revenues. While we assume that this will partially be the case, it is now about gaining as much market share as possible in this transformation, and we have already been very successful in doing so. We have already doubled our market share in ESG debt since 2019 according to Dealogic. And this brings me to technology, which is advancing at a rapid pace, and we need to gear up, too. We see here 3 levers. First, it's about using technology to create value for our clients. AI, machine learning and data will be a game changer in banking. We expect them to enable us to get closer to our clients, be in constant dialogue, increase the click-through rates and conversion on our platforms, and thus, foster growth. It's just one example. In Wealth Management, we use algorithms to continuously optimize our clients' portfolios. These algorithms monitor risks, issue regular recommendation and learn from the reactions to these. We are exploring similar next-generation technology in all businesses to apply our expertise to the value chains of our clients, better understand their journeys and develop new products and business models for them. One example where we see significant potential is our Autobahn platform. Another one is Asset-as-a-Service, which help clients shift to a pay-per-use model. Overall, we are working on more than 3 dozen AI and machine learn use cases across the bank, not only to generate revenues, but also to increase operating efficiency, which is the second lever. James will talk about expected savings later. So let me just give you 2 numbers. Our technology data and innovation function has reduced annual costs by EUR 100 million in 2021 by simplifying our technology infrastructure and applications. And for this year, we expect additional annual savings of over EUR 100 million. Going forward, we expect to further benefit from moving our operations to the cloud, which makes our partnerships in this field essential. In 2022 alone, we plan to migrate more than 100 applications to the Google Cloud. And thirdly, technology is key to further strengthen our controls and ensure stability of the bank. Over the last years, we have invested EUR 3 billion in our controls to improve, among others, our KYC and anti-financial crime systems, again, leveraging AI for automated risk detection. We plan to continue investing here, but at the same time, expect to increasingly benefit from reduced costs and higher revenues as improved systems should allow for better client onboarding. All this provides the foundation for our growth ambitions. So let me briefly summarize. We expect to benefit from underlying industry growth in coming years. As major themes are expected to reshape markets in an unprecedented way, we believe there will be a renaissance of demand for advice and risk management. We believe we have the capabilities that our clients need now. Linking that with our growth initiatives puts us in a good position to grow. We are building on a stable and promising foundation with a balanced business model, prudent risk management and a strong balance sheet. And finally, we have a proven management team, most of which has gone through the entire transformation together. This continuity was the big plus in the last 3 years compared to previous years, and we believe it will remain so. We know the bank, we know the processes, we know the clients and we have a clear agenda. In a people's business like ours, this kind of continuity counts far more than many things. It is nothing else than an invaluable asset. We set ourselves ambitious targets in 2019, and the strong foundation we have built in connection with the global trends gives us reason to be ambitious again. We aim for an average annual revenue growth of 3.5% to 4.5%. We are fully committed to remaining disciplined on cost to free up capacity for investments and improving our operational leverage. We expect this to push our cost/income ratio below 62.5% by 2025, while at the same time, generating an attractive return on tangible equity above 10%. We will continue to focus on conduct and controls and follow a clear management agenda to change the way we work, to become even more innovative and to remain an employer of choice. More on this later. Let's look a bit closer into the individual targets, starting with the revenues. Our aspiration to reach EUR 30 billion by 2025 is based on the following expectations. Taking last year's revenues of EUR 25.4 billion as a baseline, we expect that volume growth will increase our revenues by EUR 2 billion to EUR 2.5 billion by 2025. Strategic initiatives, for instance, investments into new products or new markets that offer high capital returns, should contribute another EUR 1.5 billion to EUR 2 billion. Let me give you some examples. First, we changed the approach how we cover clients, fully focusing on their needs and collaborating increasingly across divisions. Then there are new pricing models, especially in the corporate bank as well as the expansion of our ESG activities in all areas. And we are still winning clients, thanks to our better ratings and improved client onboarding. Add to this a more constructive interest rate environment in the private and in the corporate bank, where headwinds are expected to fade even under constant market rates. And in the case of rising interest rates, the benefits will further grow. We expect additional net interest income of around EUR 1.5 billion by 2025. To anticipate your questions, these expectations are based on the yield curves of February 11, but our latest interest rate snapshot on February 28 confirmed our numbers. While we expect our revenues to grow, we see plenty of potential for further efficiencies and cost saving that can take us to the cost/income ratio of less than 62.5%. Let's run through that briefly. Starting at last year's total noninterest expenses of EUR 21.5 billion, we can deduct EUR 2.7 billion in transformation costs, bank levies and CRU costs that will be gone by 2025. They simply fall away. On top of that, we expect additional operational efficiencies worth EUR 2 billion to be realized by 2025. On the next slide, I will talk to this in more detail. Unlike in the past, we aim to use these savings to reinvest in our business and to meet our growth targets, but with enhanced operating leverage. In other words, just as we were able to self-fund the radical transformation of our bank in the last years, we are now committed to self-fund the investments supporting our growth strategy. By keeping costs essentially flat and reinvesting capital accrued, we hope to trigger significant enhanced leverage and higher profitability. We are determined to work on leveraging efficiencies with the same rigor as we did in previous years with clear programs, clear accountability and clear milestones. We have been focused on building credibility on costs since the start of our transformation, and we will continue to perform on this item. We expect additional efficiencies worth EUR 2 billion, but there is scope to do more if circumstances require it. James will explain this in more detail later, but just to give you the main drivers. We expect further optimization in our franchise in Germany, including further integration of our retail network and our payment platforms as well as efficiencies in operations. As mentioned before, modernization of our tech architecture will have a significant impact. Additionally, we see further optimization potential in our front-to-back processes and in our infrastructure and control functions. To reiterate, we are expecting to leverage efficiencies to free up capital to reinvest in those areas where it can serve the needs of our clients and generate attractive returns. We are convinced that we have found a robust business mix. That being said, of course, we are always looking for opportunities to increase profitability in the Corporate Bank and the Private Bank. We have demonstrated with the CRU that we can manage capital efficiently, and we are fully determined to apply the same discipline going forward following a strict resource allocation framework. Under this framework, our individual business units face strict hurdles to ensure their plans are attractive from a strategic and financial perspective. In areas that do not meet these hurdles in the long term will be reduced or exited over time. I emphasis long term because our focus is not on maximizing near term, but on superior medium- and long-term returns, enabled by a strong and trust-based client relationship. We have identified a number of capital-light businesses where we do see further growth opportunities and compelling returns on tangible equity. Here, we aim to use additional resources to increase RWAs and invest in technology and people, including strengthening our client coverage. These areas include several payment-related business lines in the corporate bank, but also M&A advisory and our business with affluent, entrepreneur and high net worth clients in the Private Bank as well as our capital-light Asset Management. One of the things that excite me most is the prospect of strengthening our ability to generate and distribute capital. Thanks to the expected increase in profitability, we should be able to organically grow our tangible equity funded by retained earnings. If we increase our return on tangible equity by 2025 as targeted, we expect to create additional capital at scale. Of this, we plan to distribute about EUR 8 billion to shareholders for the years 2021 to 2025, and use the remainder to support our clients' activities and our revenue targets. Let's have a look at our ambitions in the individual businesses now. Obviously, the Corporate Bank is a crucial factor for our future proposition. Our global network across 151 countries and our comprehensive product suite make us the real first call partner for global multinational corporates. We want to remain the trusted partner for the German economy and build our strong long-term relationships as the #1 corporate bank in our home market. We also are committed to connect financial institutions worldwide, a business where we are one of the market leaders. We see many levers for growth in the Corporate Bank, expanding cash management and payments, growing fee-based institutional business and expanding lending volumes and our RTE accretive businesses are just 3 of them. Helping corporates in their transition to a sustainable economy is another one. Further developing our ESG offering will be an integral part of our approach, building on our tradition on innovations for corporate clients. In addition, we expect KYC expenses to normalize and see further process automation ahead. Consequently, we aim for a 55% to 60% cost-to-income ratio, based on a 6% to 7% annual revenue growth until 2025. It is important to note that up to 3% of that growth will be driven by a more favorable interest rate environment. Our Investment Bank will also be crucial to navigate clients through rapidly evolving and increasingly volatile markets. Our clients will need access to capital markets, expert advisory service and research as well as sophisticated protection against the impact of interest and exchange rate changes. As the leading global investment bank based in Europe, we believe we are well equipped to support them. We offer a comprehensive offering across our origination and advisory and fixed income and currency platforms. And the fact that clients are returning business to us shows the important role we have to play. We see ourselves in a strong position to consolidate our leading market position in fixed income and currencies where we are the joint #1 in EMEA and #2 in APAC according to Coalition. This provides the basis to grow further at very low marginal cost. We aim to build on our strong position in our Origination & Advisory business. Last year, we returned to market leadership in our German home market, and we are top 3 in debt origination in EMEA according to Dealogic. We are optimistic about our growth potential and plan targeted investments, for example, in M&A, financing or risk solution. And in our Financing business, we are ranked in the top 3 globally, as Coalition data shows. With ongoing optimization and technology and our front-to-back processes, we also plan to reduce our costs further. We expect our Investment Bank to achieve a cost/income ratio between 55% and 60% and see potential to grow revenues by 1% to 2% annually. In our Private Bank, we expect 4% to 5% revenue growth due to a mix of targeted initiatives, continued market growth and interest rate benefits. More than 20 million client relationships allow for scale effects, and we aim to further leverage our leading advisory and investment proposition. We are Germany's leading wealth manager and with around $550 billion assets under management, we are the #1 private bank based in the Eurozone. In Germany, we want to build on our leading position across all client segments. We are in the process of finalizing the consolidation of our Postbank and Deutsche Bank platform throughout 2022. Reflecting the changes in client behavior, we aim to invest in remote advisory capabilities and further transform our presence in our retail business with plans to reduce the number of branches by about 1/3 by 2025. We expect our cost/income ratio to decrease to 60% to 65%. At the same time, we aim to grow both in the high-margin lending businesses and in net inflows to assets under management. In our International Private Bank, we will continue to shift our focus to affluent, entrepreneur and wealth clients. We can offer comprehensive one-stop solutions for entrepreneurs, encompassing their companies and their personal finances. The bank for entrepreneurs, which we plan to roll out further, will foster cross-divisional collaboration and of course, cross-selling. And we see further growth potential in ESG given the high priority this topic has, especially for affluent and wealth clients. In Asset Management, we plan to build on our strong trajectory. DWS is the #1 retail fund manager in Germany and a top 3 European ETF provider. In the fast-growing ESG ETF business, we are #4 globally, and we will continue to invest in this field. We plan to capitalize on our strengths in passive and alternatives to build the best foundation for our clients' future. We aim for overall net inflows of 4% to 5% per year, paving the way to be Europe's leading asset manager with global reach. As we always said, we are also open to inorganic growth. However, acquisitions need to be complementary to our existing strengths or help us to extend our distribution network and our geographical footprint. And we plan to further reduce our cost/income ratio to below 60%. When I talk about growth opportunities in our business, it is important to remember that this growth must not be an end in itself. Culture and conduct are key to achieve sustainable profitability. During our transformation, the whole management team has been very attentive to ensure that we operate within their framework set by laws, regulatory requirements and our own policies. We will not let up on this issue and aim to invest further in making our controls more robust, efficient and secure. Three points are particularly important to us. First, we aim to further strengthen our strong risk culture based on enhanced frameworks, including for nonfinancial risk and for an ESG-related risks. This implies being vigilant on emerging risk. One field to which we pay particular attention here, cybersecurity. Secondly, we want to build on the substantial improvements made in our controls, shifting more and more to preventative risk evaluation models with clear front-to-back accountability. And as mentioned earlier, we plan to continue investing in next-gen technologies and our core control platforms to improve risk measurement and detection. This should also help us to implement new regulation even more effectively. I've now led you through our ambitions and our strategy for the years to come. While our strategy update is an evolution of what we did well before, we will think more revolutionary when it comes to the way we further evolve our organization around 2 of our most important assets: our clients and our employees. Leadership is at the heart of this. We want our leaders to role model a mindset that is solution-oriented and focused on long-term goals. And we want every employee to constantly think about how they can create value for our clients and thereby, make Deutsche Bank a truly client-led organization, in line with our global house bank aspiration. That is important not only for our business divisions, but also for each of our infrastructure functions. To support this, we continue to improve our coverage model for our individual client groups and foster collaboration between our divisions to further strengthen cross-sell. We will revise our incentive system to emphasize our client focus and cross-selling aspiration, and we will continue to work on a common set of data for our coverage teams, including one CRM system. Living up to our aspiration also requires a simpler and leaner organization. We want to increase speed with less complex structures, leaner hierarchies and agile teams across the bank. It is our ambition to shift decision-making authority more to individuals and reduce dependence on collective committees. In other words, we want to empower our people. We will work on a new meeting culture, fewer, smaller, shorter. We are determined to free up time our employees can use more productively, especially for their clients. With the targeted workforce structure, we want to ensure our people are paid according to their skills. We continue our focus on job leveling to create 100% transparency on the roads, and we expect this to create further savings by 2025. And finally, we will focus on talent and growth. In an environment where jobs are changing, our people's skills are the currency of the future. We can only serve our clients well if we have a diverse talent pool and leading experts for all relevant fields. We, therefore, plan to invest in our people to remain best in class. Future also means to discuss the future of work beyond the implementation of our hybrid working model. More flexibility does not only allow our people to decide where they are most productive, but also lead to significant real estate savings. We aim to make Deutsche Bank a workplace that promotes teamwork, creativity and inventiveness. We want to create room for growth for our employees and our clients. These changes will make our organization more nimble and adaptable, capable of adjusting to a changing environment and capturing growth opportunities that present themselves to us. This innovative and agile mindset is the final ingredient we need for success, next to our focused strategy, our strong and balanced businesses and our positioning as global house bank. This lineup gives us all confidence to achieve our ambition for 2025. A 3.5 to 4.5 percentage average revenue growth per year, making us a EUR 30 billion company at the end of the period. The cost/income ratio below 62.5%, more than 10% return on tangible equity, thanks to operational leverage. Capital distributions of EUR 8 billion to shareholders for the years 2021 to 2025, and a payout ratio of 50% from 2025 onwards, and the CET1 ratio of approximately 13%. In the next stage of our journey, we expect to reap the benefits of the previous transformation and deliver sustainable growth. We are leaner now with a much more focused setup and a strong competitive position. We believe that this will allow us to grow market share, increase earnings and generate considerable amounts of capital, thus feeding the virtuous circle again. However, our ambitions go much further. We are convinced that in the second half of this decade, we will be well positioned to play a crucial role in shaping the banking industry in Europe as the leading global house bank, based in Europe's strongest economy. In our view, no other bank is as well placed to do this as we are, and we are determined to use this position for our clients, for our employees and for our shareholders. With this, let me hand over to James, who will lead you through the financial basis for our 2025 strategy.

Welcome to our final session of the day. The targets and objectives Christian just highlighted are based on macroeconomic and interest rate assumptions as laid out in the appendix to our slide presentation. We continue to believe our medium-term expectations and the assumed operating environment represent a sensible basis on which to create plans for the future. However, as we all know, we have yet again entered a period of heightened uncertainty due to the conflict in Ukraine. This could lead to significant deviations from our plans. Regardless of the circumstances, as we have shown in recent years, this management team will strive to navigate the environment and to reach our objectives. Although our path might change, we expect our destination to remain the same. As we think about the hierarchy of targets, our primary objective is to achieve a post-tax return on tangible equity of greater than 10% for 2025. This would mean we would deliver returns at or above our estimated cost of capital. This will be supported by our targeted compound annual growth rate for revenues of between 3.5% and 4.5% over the years to 2025. As we expect to achieve further efficiencies and benefit from significant reductions in transformation-related effects, we are targeting a cost/income ratio of less than 62.5% by 2025. I will provide more color on these in a minute. Importantly, achieving these targets will enable us to expand our capital distribution goals. We now anticipate total distributions of EUR 8 billion in respect of the financial years 2021 to 2025, and we are targeting a total payout ratio of 50% from 2025. The success of our transformation and strategic plan has positioned us well and gives us confidence that our targets are achievable. Let's now look at how we expect operating leverage to drive the return on tangible equity from 4% in 2021 to greater than 10% over the period to 2025. The main driver we plan for will be revenue growth, which we expect to contribute 6 percentage points to our target with cost reductions adding a further 3 percentage points. Further, continued contained risk levels and underwriting discipline should result in provision for credit losses only marginally impacting returns by approximately 1 percentage point over the period. And finally, we anticipate a drag of around 2 percentage points on expected returns, mainly due to a higher equity base, reflecting capital retention to support business growth and Basel III compliance. We believe our franchise, which Christian spoke to earlier, provides us with the opportunity to capture the market growth opportunities we see over the coming years for our businesses and to grow our market share. This, combined with the benefits of our strategic initiatives, would drive the group to our targeted revenue compound growth rate of between 3.5% and 4.5% over the period to 2025. We expect revenues to increase between 2% and 2.5% from volume growth on average across our businesses. This is in line with the estimated underlying growth of the markets we operate in, and we believe this is a conservative estimate, especially when compared to our recent performance. Our ongoing and new strategic initiatives are expected to add a further 1.5% to 2% to our annual revenue growth rate with the Investment Bank, Private Bank and Corporate Bank, providing broadly equal contributions. With the interest rate outlook improving, the long-lasting headwinds we have experienced will turn into tailwinds in the years to come, and we expect that net interest income growth on the back of improved curves will contribute around 1.5% to our revenue trajectory. All divisions will contribute to revenue growth, and we expect it will be the Corporate Bank and Private Bank that contribute the most, each representing about 1/3 of the total increase. We expect the Corporate Bank to deliver a compound annual growth rate of between 6% and 7%, benefiting from our strong position in growing markets. In the Private Bank, we expect growth of around 4% to 5% from volumes, strategic initiatives and the impact of interest rate changes. Both the Investment Bank and Asset Management delivered strong revenue performance in 2021. We expect these divisions to increase revenues over time, despite the normalization of the financial market environment in the post-pandemic period. For the Investment Bank, we expect revenue growth to be around 1% to 2%, mainly driven by our strategic initiatives. In Asset Management, revenue growth of approximately 4% to 5% is supported by targeted inflows of 4% per year, a little below our recent performance. In other revenues, we capture the contribution from Corporate and Other and the Capital Release Unit, and the impact of other revenue drivers. Overall, looking at our positioning, execution track record and the anticipated environment, we are confident we can deliver revenue growth in the target range of 3.5% to 4.5% over the coming years. As Christian has outlined, we have transformed and positioned the businesses to continue capturing market growth opportunities. both domestically and globally. In the Corporate Bank, approximately 2.5% of their total revenue growth is expected to be driven by base book and wallet increases. Here, we expect growth from our existing clients as well as expanding business with them. For example, increasing revenues with corporates in cash management and in the payment space. Building on last year's achievements, we also intend to expand our lending activities across all regions, particularly in trade finance. And in the Private Bank, growth of assets under management and loan volumes is expected to continue, resulting in an underlying revenue growth rate of approximately 3%, excluding the previous impact of BGH. We expect our volume growth to exceed that of the market as the results of our investments in the franchise and our differentiated product capabilities make us a more attractive provider for our clients. And with growing confidence in the bank, we expect to win more clients and expand their business with us, especially family entrepreneurs in Europe and Asia, whom we are uniquely positioned to serve. In Asset Management, targeted inflows of 4% on average should be delivered through the continued shift to passive products as well as high-margin strategies and driven by targeted investments we have made in these areas. Lastly, the Investment Bank. Having demonstrated stellar performance over the previous 2 years, we will continue the disciplined resource deployment we've shown, for example, in the financing business going forward. Investments into senior coverage bankers within Origination & Advisory will enable the targeted growth in market share within mergers and acquisitions to offset the expected fee pool declines. Our strategic initiatives are paying off, particularly in the Investment Bank, where we will continue to see benefits of our FICC transformation. Prior investments into areas such as FX forwards, the sterling complex, European government bonds, flow credit trading and global emerging markets will also continue to deliver revenue growth. This will be supplemented by further investments into targeted low marginal cost income and resource-efficient opportunities. For example, the development of technology-led client solutions, expansion of our onshore LatAm footprint in Mexico and the development of adjacent business lines supporting our current portfolio. In the Corporate Bank, we've also started to reap the benefits of our strategic initiatives and investments, launching new products and gaining new client groups. We're seeing revenue contributions from our new merchant solutions business as well as from serving platforms, fintechs and e-commerce businesses, and we will continue building on our efforts in these areas. Furthermore, we will support our corporate clients and their new business models. For example, with innovative financial solutions in areas like Asset-as-a-Service. The Private Bank will capitalize on the benefits of improved technology, both in cost efficiencies and revenue initiatives, the greater focus on advisers and growth in assets under management and loans. In the International Private Bank, our focus on family entrepreneurs, requiring a wide product suite of financing and lending capabilities and investment advisory will support growth, particularly in EMEA and APAC. In Asset Management, we will continue to deliver ESG capabilities and sustainable investment solutions to clients. In addition, we will further enhance our platform scale with new distribution access and enlarging our geographical footprint. We recognize that implied market rate curves have been moving dramatically in recent weeks. However, we do believe that inflation will be persistent, likely even more so as a result of recent events. So while the interest rate outlook may be less predictable in the current environment, we nonetheless continue to expect the rate environment to be more supportive to our businesses than in the recent years. The plan we are presenting is based on implied rate curves as of February 11, 2022, assuming a constant balance sheet. The resulting estimated revenue benefit amounts to EUR 1.5 billion by 2025 compared to the EUR 900 million we guided for at our fourth quarter results. As you can see, despite the market shock over the first few days of the war in Ukraine, rates prevailing on February 28 led to a path broadly consistent with our plan rates. Watching markets over the last few days, we expect the impact to remain within the boundaries of the 25 basis points sensitivity on the slide. The Corporate Bank and the Private Bank will be the main beneficiaries of the interest rate tailwind, together accounting for more than 80% of the cumulative EUR 1.5 billion we expect by 2025. These interest rate effects are partially offset by an increase in funding costs for certain items, most notably the assumed roll-off of TLTRO. Accounting for these, you can see that the Investment Bank profile will be unchanged, but the Private Bank and Corporate Bank will still see support to their revenue growth rates. Now let's look at how costs will develop and support our return trajectory. From a starting point of EUR 21.5 billion in 2021, we expect our noninterest expenses to fall by EUR 2.5 billion to EUR 3 billion by 2025 to between EUR 18.5 billion and EUR 19 billion. The biggest reduction in the initial phase is coming from normalization, as we recorded EUR 1.5 billion of transformation-related effects in our cost base in 2021. Next, we expect relief from the Single Resolution Fund assessment as the fund balance reaches its target size and the initial assessment period comes to its legislatively mandated end. We currently estimate that bank levies will be around EUR 200 million by 2025, mostly driven by expenses related to the operational maintenance of the SRF. Costs related to litigation and regulatory enforcement are expected to diminish, as the number of matters we face have declined further, also reflecting our controlled -- our improved controls and culture. We expect a reduction of around EUR 300 million compared to the 2021 base. And finally, to reach normalized noninterest expenses before efficiency measures of around EUR 18.8 billion, we expect to lower costs in the Capital Release Unit by EUR 600 million. As Christian described, we've been working on initiatives that will deliver savings of around EUR 2 billion. We intend to reinvest the majority of these savings to support business growth. And together with the expected cost inflation, we believe this will result in noninterest expenses of around EUR 18.5 billion to EUR 19 billion in 2025. As you know, we have made investments into the stabilization of our platforms and controls, leading to cost reductions and profitability improvements over the past years. These investments and our cost discipline should allow us to grow at scale while delivering the additional approximately EUR 2 billion of efficiencies, which will principally come from 4 initiatives. Let me start with Germany. Our UNITY program is a key example of how we create efficiencies by simplifying our technology infrastructure. As we said before, we will consolidate 2 systems into one technology platform for Germany. Among other benefits, this will result in the migration of 12 million Postbank clients to a single Deutsche Bank infrastructure. And our IT applications will reduce by more than 50%. We have completed testing for the first migration wave to the new platform and we're now preparing the cutover. In addition, we are in the process of optimizing our Corporate Bank head office and payments platform. This will create additional efficiencies, upgrade client channels and experience, improve underlying surveillance and control processes; as well as ensuring scalability of our cash management business. Aside from the integration of our retail technology infrastructure, we are fundamentally reshaping our bank-wide technology architecture. We are creating a more flexible technology base and improving time to market for business solutions and digitally enabled products, thanks to our partnership with Google. The cloud-based infrastructure also allows us to further simplify our legacy estate as we continue to reduce the number of discrete applications used across the bank. We are delivering these improvements on the back of a Deutsche Bank-wide streamlined data architecture. Moving to our front-to-back process redesign, which is also aimed at increasing efficiency from front office operations, let me give you 3 examples of deliverables we are working on. First, we are reengineering the lending architecture and processes of the transaction life cycle in the Corporate Bank and the Investment Bank. This will enable RWA optimization through enhanced risk mitigation tools, and it will create cost efficiencies by increasing automation and digitalization. It will also support revenue growth as we provide improved services and capabilities to our clients. Next, we're increasing automation of our operations in the Corporate Bank to a targeted 90%, which will help us to reduce manual work as well as associated FTEs by approximately 50% in certain areas. This will be achieved through end-to-end redesign and zero-touch intelligent workflows. Finally, the transformation of our client life cycle management will reduce the time it takes to onboard new clients without compromising the associated risk assessment, thanks to our improved technology and processes. In addition, we have identified incremental efficiency potential in our infrastructure functions. For example, there are further opportunities to optimize our footprint in a number of areas, including through automation, location of staff and corporate title distributions. Our initiatives are underpinned by the transformation in the way we work that Christian outlined earlier. Our investment in simplifying and modernizing our technology estate is paying dividends. We are increasingly shifting the investment focus towards future scalability. Over the next 4 years, we will be spending more on investments to fuel growth and at the same time reduce our overall IT costs. Importantly, we will continue to invest in cybersecurity as well as our control and risk frameworks to strengthen the confidence customers and regulators have in us as we grow the business. Naturally, technology and digitalization investments dominate our overall investment profile and provide a strong foundation for growth. However, these expenditures should not overshadow the roughly EUR 1 billion we will invest outside technology. These investments include strategic front-office hires in the Investment Bank. And in the International Private Bank, we will hire relationship managers and invest to expand our market presence. We will also selectively hire to bolster our control and risk functions. In short, our strategy is already delivering and will continue to help us achieve sustainable profitability. This in turn provides the foundation for self-funded strategic investments. Let's see how the combination of revenue increases and our efficiency measures play out on our cost-income ratio. As said, we expect our cost-income ratio to fall from 85% in 2021 towards our 70% target at the end of this year and to less than 62.5% by the end of 2025. 13 percentage points of this decrease is attributable to revenue growth, and a further 10 percentage points from the normalization and cost savings I described earlier, while the efficiency measures we just reviewed will be offset by business growth, reinvestments and inflation. Once again, operating leverage creates the virtuous circle. We covered risk management in the mark-to-market presentation, where we showed that we have a sound record in risk management stretching back over many years. Not to repeat ourselves, but it is due to our conservative risk profile and strong risk management discipline that we have kept our provision for credit losses remarkably stable. The through-the-cycle provision for credit losses has remained around 20 basis points of average loans. And while the current situation creates some uncertainty, we continue to adhere to our strict risk discipline, and we plan to keep our portfolios essentially unchanged in their quality. On this basis, we believe our planned credit costs through the cycle to 2025 can be maintained around 20 basis points. Let me sum up the outcome of our financial targets on one page. We have 4 businesses that have complementary strengths and resilience in evolving macroeconomic environments. And we believe this mix will help us to achieve our targets irrespective of the challenges we now face. In the Corporate Bank, the outcome of our investments in growth will support the expected revenue increase alongside ongoing loan and fee income growth. In the Investment Bank, we have made strategic decisions to invest in capital-light activities that should deliver revenue growth while supporting returns. At the same time, we will invest in resource optimization to maintain and improve our efficiency. The Private Bank is expected to see profitability improvements with a combination of improved revenues and existing and new efficiency measures. And finally, in Asset Management, we will continue with the investment initiatives in platforms and products that we anticipate will enhance our competitive positioning in the market. Turning to our capital plan. We intend to maintain a strong common equity Tier 1 ratio and preserve a 200 basis points distance above our expected maximum distributable amount. As you may remember, we ended the year 2021 with a strong CET1 ratio of 13.2%, well above the MDA level of 10.4%. If you recall, from our year-end communication, we guided you that the announced countercyclical and systemic risk buffers would add around 50 basis points to our supervisory requirements, thereby increasing MDA to around 11%, so our operating level would be a CET1 ratio of around 13%. Let's have a look at the path from year-end 2021 to year-end 2025 that gets us there. We bucket the impacts into 4 broad categories. Firstly, we expect a strong increase in profitability, which is able to fund RWA growth of around 2.5% per annum. Secondly, the Capital Release Unit will continue to manage down the remaining exposures. However, the ongoing cost burden will exceed the capital benefit from additional RWA reductions. Thirdly, Basel III internal model related impacts are expected to increase our risk-weighted assets by approximately EUR 25 billion, as we've signaled before. And lastly, we promised to return capital to our shareholders and we fully intend to fulfill this promise. Importantly, we believe that our trajectory still gives us sufficient flexibility to react to unforeseen risks. Going forward, we will continue to be responsible stewards of our capital. And we will create value for shareholders through capital distributions as well as the reinvestment of capital into our businesses. Clearly, we will also retain equity to comply with Basel III, which requires us to grow our average tangible equity from EUR 50 billion in 2021 to approximately EUR 62 billion in 2025. As expected, the Capital Release Unit will have reduced its relative share from approximately 9% to 5% of tangible equity. This capital can be deployed into our stable businesses of Asset Management, Corporate Bank and Private Bank, which will continue to account for around 50% of our average tangible equity, as we discussed earlier. We will continue to allocate capital to the Investment Bank at around 45%. This path includes the impact of Basel III, meaning that the Investment Bank will continue to use resources efficiently and grow less-capital-intensive businesses. In short, we expect to maintain a relatively stable capital allocation profile over the coming years despite the impact of the Basel III regulatory changes. I will provide you with more precise guidance on the capital distributions we expect. We are very conscious of the uncertainties ahead of us, and therefore, some embedded flexibility seems prudent. It is our ambition to reach a total payout ratio of 50% of our net income attributable to shareholders in 2025 and thereafter. We start with a dividend of EUR 0.20 in relation to the 2021 financial year, which is complemented by our announced share buybacks of EUR 300 million. We are targeting sustainable growth of our cash dividends in the early years of our projection period. Hence, it is our intention to increase the nominal dividend per share by 50% per annum, at least until it reaches EUR 0.68 in respect of the 2024 financial year. We're committed to returning excess capital to shareholders through further share buybacks over and above the requirement to support profitable growth and a glide path to meet upcoming regulatory changes. As said, we intend to reach a total payout ratio of 50% in the financial year 2025. This will be through a combination of dividends paid in respect of the financial year 2024 and share buybacks executed in 2025. After 2025, our plan is to sustain a distribution policy based on a total payout ratio of 50%. We believe this payout level supports the future capital requirements associated with the final leg of Basel III implementation. In total, our ambition is to distribute EUR 8 billion of capital for the period up to and including the financial year 2025, subject to the achievement of our financial and strategic plans and, of course, requisite shareholder and regulatory approvals. We believe it is a significant validation of our collective achievements over the past several years that we are able to lay out these plans for you, our shareholders, who have supported our journey so far. Let me conclude with the key takeaways of our financial objectives. We aim to deliver returns in excess of our cost of equity through increasing operating leverage in a more favorable environment. Improving returns on tangible equity will continue to be driven by factors largely within our control. Our ongoing efficiency initiatives will lead to savings that can be reinvested into technology and franchise improvements. We are now in a position to increase our investments into growth initiatives. Our capital plan accommodates reinvestment into businesses and addresses regulatory inflation driven by the impact of Basel III, while we expect to manage our CET1 ratio to achieve an operating level of around 13% in 2025. And as we said, executing on these objectives allows us to target an anticipated distribution of EUR 8 billion for the financial years 2021 to 2025. I hope you have found the presentations from Christian and me interesting. And I'm sure that you'll have questions, so let me hand it over to Ioana, who will start that process.

Thank you, James. We will now have a break and at the same time open the registration process where you can submit your questions. We will take questions broadly in the order that they are registered. Similar to the last investor deep dive, we have 2 options for those who would like to ask questions. First, we will take video questions via Zoom. We will then also take questions submitted via the chat. If you are having technical issues, please contact the investor relations team via the same portal. We will now take a break, and we will then start with your questions. [Break]

Welcome back. We can now start with your questions. As per the updated agenda on our website, you'll note we are now joined by Stuart Lewis, our Chief Risk Officer, who will also take your questions. As a brief reminder: Instructions on how to ask questions are shown on the event homepage. And with that, let's get started.

The first question comes from Daniele Brupbacher at UBS.

I hope it works. I probably have 3 questions, if that's okay, 1 on probably more the revenue trajectory. I mean thank you very much for that detailed guidance. It makes some assumptions which are transparent, so I think that's appreciated. If I look at the divisions added up compared to the group, obviously the missing 2 entities are the noncore and center. Probably how should we think about this? It seems like a small revenue delta. Probably more importantly, how should we think about profit or loss drags coming from these units? And then second question, on capital returns, very clear and very bullish message, I guess. Is it fair to say that the primary driver is the 200 basis points MDA buffer rather than profits or the 10% RoTE? And how you think about flexibility to be able to protect that EUR 8 billion in case of lower profits. And lastly, just given current extreme and -- the extreme environment -- and I appreciate your press release from last night, which is -- and it's also a reassuring message. Do you see in any submarkets a particular stress that worries you -- not specifically for you but for the overall market? What should we keep on the radar screen a bit more specifically?

Well, Daniele, thank you for your questions and thank you for joining us this afternoon. I'll be brief. On the revenue trajectory, yes, there are some changes in the Corporate & Other segment over that period of time, some funding changes as well that take place. The CRU is -- can be essentially disregarded from a revenue perspective once you get to 2025; in fact, even this year and the years to come, really not a significant factor. As you say, on the capital trajectory, the 200 basis points is a key measure for us. It anticipates the change in the countercyclical buffer. Interestingly, we're at a point where we sort of know what Basel III, more or less, will entail. And we can build against our expectations there, but there's really no good news built into the trajectory over that period of time, so if there are things that move from the Pillar 2 to Pillar 1, for example, or other changes, they could play a role but at this point not built into our planning. We have to be prudent, I think, built a degree of flexibility into our capital plans, so we're very comfortable with where we've laid out.

Okay, Daniele, on the areas of stress, I will hand over in a second to Stuart, who's also for that purpose with us today, but I would say, first of all, as we have disclosed last night, and you referred to that, we feel very comfortable with our exposure we have. Obviously, on purpose, since 2014, we have significantly reduced our footprint and exposure. And now we are going through -- after we think there is no material risk for us at kind of in terms of primary risk, we are now going through so-called secondary and tertiary risks. And Stuart will go through this, but I have to tell you that also there we should always have in mind our diversified and high-quality loan book. And also I know there's a lot of discussions on Germany, but you can imagine that I'm in tense and detailed discussions with my colleagues, in particular on the [ DACs ] and family-owned companies. The resilience and also the flexibilities these companies have -- and if I compare my discussions from a week ago with the one I had this morning just again with them: The speed of how they adjust to supply chains, raw material supply shows me again what the flexibility and resilience of our companies here in the home market are. And therefore, I'm not concerned, but Stuart will -- for sure, has further comments.

Sure. Thank you, Christian. Thank you, Daniele, for your question. Look. As I think has been said, it's quite a fluid situation, so where we are now seeing knock-on impacts is clearly in the energy sector, oil and gas sector, commodity sector. And there's a variety [ of kind of ] parties who, I guess, are -- start to show some evidence of stress. They are, I believe, right now managing their risks prudently, but [ this is with a question of kind of probably having ] sufficient liquidity to see themselves through what is, I mean, a fairly lengthy period of -- or potentially a lengthy period of heightened volatility. So those are sectors that we're watching closely. And we're now starting to model what we think the impact of a prolonged sort of strike in those sectors might mean for our portfolio, but as Christian has said, I think, during COVID, our portfolio witnessed that it's pretty resilient. It's well diversified. The underlying loan book in particular is, I will say, strong. And therefore, at the moment, as we said in our release last night and -- that our current exposure, particularly to Russian [ names ], is somewhat contained, yes. And certainly any loss that may materialize from that is more than digestible for us as we currently see it.

Thank you, gentlemen. The next question comes from Kian Abouhossein at JPMorgan.

The first question is specific on commodity-related exposure. Can you talk a little bit more in detail, not just Russia but generally, your risk to commodity trading? And in particular if you can discuss a little bit commodity trading companies. So if you can go a little bit into that area. The second question is I didn't hear you reiterating your revenue guidance on fixed income, I recall, the EUR 6.7 billion. Can you please give us an update if that's still relevant for '22 as well as the EUR 450 million of cost adjustments in the first quarter that you gave at the full year stage? And lastly, and apologies, one more question. Can you just run me a little bit through further details of the 700 million delta in costs between '21 and '22? I think, CRU, you mentioned 300 million, but there's another 400 million as well as clearly cost growth, inflationary costs, et cetera, rate settlements, so can you just explain a little bit more in detail the path between '21 and '22 costs besides the CRU adjustments?

So I suggest we start with Stuart and on the commodity question. I then go on with the -- your fixed income revenue and the costs question which arise from the Q4. And then for the bridge '21 to '22, I would say James is taking that one. Stuart?

Yes, sure. Thank you. All right, Kian, you know that we don't specify individual names when we talk about risks but more generically. Yes, we do deal with our commodity trading partners. It's not an area that we have huge exposure to. The bulk of the exposure will be in the form of short-term trade, and [ that's through the ] financing shipments of commodity. At the moment, all those commodity traders are seeing elevated demand for trade finance. The [indiscernible] -- some of the ones that we do with [indiscernible] to strong liquidity both through trade finance and revolving credit facilities. And we're not seeing any negative impact right now [ or on ] any of our key counterparties. As a general rule, they tend to be rated [ BBB, BBB- ], so they're not necessarily hugely strong in terms of credit rating, but their near-term liquidity is pretty robust. And we think the risk to that sector is well managed and well contained.

And Kian, to your second question, on fixed income. Now look. I think we were already pretty transparent with our February year-to-date numbers for the Investment Bank with EUR 2.2 billion. I will not give far further transparency, but let me give you some directions. I think we all can see that, in the O&A area, overall the market is slower than last year. And that means that we had a very good start in fixed income, if what -- if I would not say an even better start than fixed -- than very good. So far, that obviously brings us into the position to confirm the EUR 6.7 billion number you refer to given what I have seen over the first 2 months; given that we really play in the strengths of Rates, FX, the financing business but in particular in Rates and FX but also in Emerging Markets. I mean also what we all said about Russia, that we positioned ourselves rather conservatively, obviously now plays into the right direction. I would say that the EUR 6.7 billion is a number we absolutely stick to. And given the first 2 months, I would even say that we are on a good path of being better than that number. On the costs number, Kian, yes. We know exactly what we have told you about the EUR 450 million. And so far, I think there is good discipline in the company, all I can see in January and February. We are working towards that number. And I feel, so far, we are on track and we are talking now 10th of March.

Yes, just picking up on costs, Kian. As Christian says and I said in the prepared remarks, we're running at this point at a level, through the first 2 months, that are entirely consistent with the bridge that we gave you. So 3 billion or an average of 1.5 billion per month year-to-date. That actually includes about an 80 million FX headwind. As you saw both on the revenues and the expense side, the FX movement has been pretty dramatic in terms of euro weakening. And naturally that feeds into our numbers, but the underlying performance is there, is exactly where we were seeking for it to be. In terms of the bridge from '21 to '22, there's a lot of -- under the surface. The biggest contributor, I have to say, is what we call the key deliverables. So the transformation projects, initiatives that have been underway now for a couple of years deliver about 400 million of that decline. And that's across the segments and that's both technology and also compensation expense. We are expecting a pretty significant reduction in the Private Bank this year as the benefit of initiatives there on both personnel and distribution platform play through. Really much of that is a run rate, in '22, of savings that have already been captured. We have some growth in certain areas as well. So Asset Management, as we've talked about, the control functions are areas where there are some incremental investments. And one of the changes we've made in our planning recently has been to increment actually our technology budgets a little bit relative to where we were a couple of months ago, benefiting from, I think, the more favorable revenue outlook that we now see for the year. So there's a lot in that bridge, but we remain very confident in the path forward to both the RoTE and the progress towards the 70% target that we've talked about.

And may I just follow up very briefly? Historically you have given a path in terms of branch reductions and staff reductions. Clearly it's also a lot of things have changed, including insourcing and all that stuff, but is there anything you can give us on the Private Bank in terms of what is remaining?

Well, look. It's going to take several years. So the -- it's the nature of employee reductions in Germany that one goes through it in individual agreements with the workers' council. You execute it. And it's in fact done on an individual basis, but the momentum is there. We've shown you about 4,000 reductions in full-time equivalent over the past several years. So that's a direction of travel that we'll continue in Germany not just in '22 but in the years beyond. We've talked, for example, about additional distribution network reductions; and that will come also with head count reductions over time. The last thing I'd say, Kian, to that element of our plans: We've already incurred the lion's share of the restructuring and severance that's attached to those plans, so we feel actually very confident about the direction of travel and all the work we've done to prepare.

The next question is from Andrew Lim, Societe Generale.

So my first question, let's see, your revenue guidance. You've increased [indiscernible] guidance yet again, mainly on higher forward rates. I was wondering, though, about your thoughts on the cost-income ratio. You will expect most of that to fall down to the bottom line, but you get to a cost-income ratio of 70%, so I'm wondering what you're thinking [ this year ] as to where a good part of that net interest income goes to in terms of costs. And where do you see that going in terms of like maybe investment or comp costs going higher? So that's my first question. And then secondly, just feeding on from what Kian was sort of talking about in terms of like second-order effects. I know you've given guidance up to the end of February, but of course, the market is quite dynamic. And a lot has changed, but what are you seeing in terms of like IB issuance, revenues and the impact there and also maybe on commodity derivatives? There's been some banks that have been [indiscernible] on the wrong side [indiscernible]. Do you have any exposures there? And perhaps you can tie that in maybe with guidance for CIB revenues for 1Q. And [ JPMorgan ] gave some guidance, but do you feel in the same position where you can give similar guidance?

So thank you for your questions, Andrew. I'll start. And Christian, I'm sure, will want to add. Well, look. First of all, the Origination & Advisory or Corporate Finance wallet is absolutely down this year-to-date. So about 30% relative to what was a strong year in '21. We'll expect to, more or less, follow the market in that regard. And hence, I think, the bullish statement that we make about FIC in this environment is being able to compensate and potentially more than compensate the weaker environment in O&A. So that's very encouraging. Look. If there were anything that we're seeing in the early days of March, that would be that there's a significant departure from the performance through February, we'd tell you. So at least for now, things have continued on an even keel despite the market environment. Obviously there's a few more weeks to go in this quarter and it's been an eventful one, and so we're working hard to help move that forward. On the expense side, you're right. There has been an increment in our views about revenues, some of which is FX. And that's also played through on the expense lines but also an even greater confidence that we have in terms of the 2022 performance. Some of that in our planning is being reinvested. I'd say the lion's share of that in technology; some amount in additional decisions we've made in terms of investing in our businesses; and then lastly, the control functions. We've talked a lot about the need to sustain the investment in controls across the firm. I'd say those are the 3 areas that we've incremented in our -- in terms of our budgeting and planning.

Well, there's nothing to add because James said everything, also with regard to a little bit guiding the IB revenues in the first quarter; as he's pointing out rightly, also in March a very encouraging development, so far, but we remain disciplined. But so far, we feel well on track to have a very good first quarter in the IB.

And on commodity -- and as Stuart, I'm sure, may want to add, on commodity derivatives exposure, again we're not a significant player there at all. And so I don't want to comment on specific situations that are taking place in the marketplace, but you would not expect us to be involved. Stuart, anything you wanted to add?

That's correct. So our commodities business, as I mentioned to Kian, is trade finance and some revolving credit to some of the commodity players, but in terms of sort of derivative-type business, very limited, some precious metal activity. That's it.

The next question comes from Amit Goel of Barclays.

So I've got [indiscernible] related questions. And so the first question again maybe comes back to one of the points that Andrew mentioned but on the costs. So I guess the implied 2022 costs are a little bit higher than previously. If as a result of the Russian situation the revenue outlook does deteriorate a bit this year, just curious how much flexibility there is on that side. And then also I'm just trying to understand. I mean obviously in the Corporate Bank there's a 6% to 7% revenue growth aspiration. Clearly part of that is interest rate driven, but again I'm just trying to understand the analysis or what kind of thought process you put in for the impact on German corporates from supply chain disruption. I know you touched on it earlier. So that's one part. And the other part is basically just trying to understand. I guess now on the divisional basis the targets are very much revenue focused, less [ on ] RoTE. Clearly, interest rates are a part of that, but if interest rates do turn out to be a little bit weaker, I'm just curious what you're doing in terms of making sure you get the right behavior and to still try to achieve those ambitions.

Sure, Amit. I'll take perhaps the third and the first. And we can both -- and Christian will take the second. Look. On the interest rates, it's interesting. We've been thrilled with the -- in a sense, our improved ability to have perfect linkages between treasury, on the one hand, and the businesses, on the other; and then work with clients, frankly, in a constructive way to manage pricing, the nature of the business they do with us, particularly on the liability side and what have you. So we're really pleased with improvements in that linkage and the behavior that we can drive. As we look at the interest rate curves and scenario at this point, as we said in the prepared remark and looking at the sensitivity, we feel like it's a reasonably solid case at this point. And if anything, the inflationary environment looks to us to be persistent. And the unfortunate situation in the Ukraine will probably feed through into more inflation over time. So we look at that curve as being a reasonably solid planning basis going forward. In terms of flex, I think the question is probably one you'd ask about both '22 and '25. Obviously it's something we've been working on for a while, is getting a better degree of flexibility in our cost base and getting to a point where the marginal decisions that we're making are ones that allow us to preserve the overall performance that we're driving towards. In '22, we would need to fall somewhere between, in round numbers, EUR 18 billion and EUR 19 billion. We think we've got a strong path to that. And a fair amount of the incremental expense on the upside is essentially volume- and revenue-driven, whether that's incentive compensation or some of the business investments that we are contemplating. So I do think there is some flex in '22, although we're still having to make hard yards. Over time into '25 or the years to '25, we think we've got ever more flexibility, some of which has to do again with the increasing margin, the increasing flexibility in areas that are responsive to revenues. And some of it has to do with our ability to throttle investments. And that's where you'd like to be in terms of having a greater degree of discretion in how you manage towards your targets.

And on your Corporate Bank question, look. We look at the growth. And then therefore, again I think the January, February is giving you a quite good direction actually for that business. And I come to your question in how far the crisis will affect also the German corporates, but overall what we see with 950 million of revenues after 2 months, that is a quite stable business. So I'm not suggesting that you easily and just can multiply that by 6, but we are very absolutely on course or even slightly ahead of our own plan to come to the revenue number for 2022. And why? Where are the drivers? On the one hand, in 2022, the headwinds from the interest rate on the Corporate Bank are falling away, so you can really now see the underlying growth in that business coming through in full. We have very good demand actually in our existing business. Also there we should still have in mind that, still from the rating agencies actions in the third and in the fourth quarter which we had last year, we are still benefiting in doing more businesses with our corporates. Cross-selling between the Investment Bank and corporate banking is improving month by month, so we see a really good underlying growth in the existing client base. And then we have worked very hard over the last years on new products, asset as a service, merchant banking, all items which are now coming to the market and which are actually asked for. So in this regard, we do believe that the number which we have given for 2022 but also the growth number on interest rates, growth in the existing business plus new products is something which we can realize. On your question in how far these corporates are affected. At the end of the day, it is too early to judge after 2 weeks, but our people are in constant outreach with our clients. Stuart was just talking about the most impacted industry. So we are reaching out. And what we can see is actually a quite robust feedback from our corporate clients. And again the resiliency and the flexibility there to adjust also for that crisis we have right now is actually pretty amazing, and therefore, I'm confident that we can achieve these numbers. And we are not just banking on 1 driver but on 3 drivers, and so far, we have shown that we are successful with that.

And sorry, just to follow up on the points in terms of behavior and how you drive behavior, obviously, within the divisions. It's revenue growth targets rather than RoTE, so just again just double checking. Is that via the compensation structures? Or how do you ensure that you get the right behavior from the employees to achieve those revenue growth aspirations?

Well, I think that is an overriding question. I'm glad you ask this because I think the whole turnaround which we have seen within Deutsche Bank is not just the turnaround in terms of financials, cleaning up the balance sheet, having the right and robust risk management, but it's in particular over the last 4 years working on the culture. And the culture really means for us that we want to do businesses which is long term the right business for our clients and for us. And we see the potential to grow with our clients. That was the essential reason why we actually said 3 years ago we want to be a client-focused and client-centric organization and move a bit away from the product-centric organization. And that really helped us, that what we want to do is grow with our clients. And you can see that in the behavior. And of course, the behavior is then supported by a KPI system, which is monitored by our CFO, which clearly looks not only on revenues but also obviously on cost-income and RoTE but as much on behavioral points, i.e., red flags, the way we are remediating our issues, our regulatory issues. All that fills -- fits into the assessment of a unit and into the assessment of our senior people. So I think we have gone miles in improving the culture. That never stops. We know we even have to do more, but I feel that we have now the right incentive structure and the right cultural environment to make us successful.

The next question is from Adam Terelak of Mediobanca.

I had one on capital and capital deployment and then the other on the interest rate assumptions. So clearly it's a very strong growth plan you're putting out today. And by my mind, I was potentially expecting a little bit more of a tilt towards capital return rather than deployment. Can you just talk us through how that might look if kind of growth in demand doesn't come through as expected? Clearly the environment has changed a lot probably since you first started putting these targets together. And just what capital return could look like if the consumption in the bank isn't quite there. And whether we could be operating on a slightly smaller balance sheet come 2025 if Europe is in a slightly more challenged position than potentially first envisaged. And then secondly, just on the interest rate assumptions, I get your point on that the curve is improving since December. The 400 million upgrade in the revenues into 2022, I'd like to just get a bit more color as what's driving that. Is it hikes, or is it the long end? And then can you just give us a little bit of split between what's euro and what's other currencies? So how much of the 1.5 billion through 2025 is U.S. dollar. Because I think that's probably a little bit more reliable at this stage given the state of -- or the positioning of the ECB [ plus the Fed ].

Sure. Thank you, Adam. Well, look. I mean we are assuming relatively significant capital retention in order to support balance sheet growth. And in turn, that balance sheet growth is part of the revenue story. If the demand for loans isn't there, that will, of course, impact the size of the balance sheet and the capital we need to have to support it, but it'll also impact the revenues. So while there would be potentially more capital to distribute, there'd also be less capital generation. At the moment, I have to say we're pretty comfortable that we can grow in line with these plans. In general we've been constraining growth over the past several years in over the -- in the company. And that doesn't really change over these next several years given that we're still building towards our Basel III environment, so if anything, I would say that we're still constraining growth to what -- relative to what we think the [ businesses could achieve ] if they were less constrained. As it relates to the interest rate assumptions, obviously we're more sensitive to euro. And so over time through to 2025, both long- and short-term rates have made themselves almost fully felt at that point in time based on the current curve. We are more sensitive to the short end in both euro and dollars. And so a delay [ in ] a movement obviously is impactful now in '22 and '23 to the extent that it is delayed ultimately, but by 2025, our view is it will all have fed through. And frankly, the events that you saw today with the ECB's announcements tends also again to confirm our view on rates.

And a little bit of color on the 400 million this year?

That -- look. That's again mostly the sort of long -- the effect of long-term euros that we've been able to crystallize into the P&L. And so does the dollar help? Yes, a little bit, although we've also through our hedging programs been able to bring some of that forward, in fact, into '21, let alone '22, yes. So it remains overweight euro still in '22.

The next question is from Stuart Graham at Autonomous.

I had 2 or 3, please. I think, the first one, for Christian. You talked a lot about positioning Deutsche for a consolidating banking market post 2025, so I guess my question is when do you think, [ a, this ] happens. And what sort of market share do you think Deutsche needs to have in a consolidated banking market? That's the first question. Second question, I guess, is for James. Can you just give us an RWA target for 2025? What number are we talking about in terms of RWAs? And then the third question, I guess, is for Stuart, again on this commodity trading. It feels like the U.S. banks are doing a derivative business and the European banks are doing the [ LC ] and trade finance business. You said you're doing some stress tests now. What do you think -- what macro circumstances need to happen for European banks to lose a lot of money in this business, do you think?

Stuart, let me take your first question. Now I don't have the crystal ball on either, so if you ask me for a specific year, I don't know, but all I can tell you is 2 or 3 directional themes I can see also with the new government in Berlin. Number one, the banking and Capital Markets Union is clearly mentioned in the coalition agreement. And in a way, it was not mentioned before. And all I can see is that actually Berlin clearly sees the benefits of the banking and Capital Markets Union for Europe because they exactly know that the deepening of the Capital Markets Union is essential to get the green deal done. So clearly more support than ever before also from our government. Secondly, the political environment we have right now, in particular in relation to the war, is that what we all can see; and that is a more united Europe than ever before. And I also see and hear that this may also further accelerate discussions in the Capital Markets Union. And in this regard, I do believe that this is a topic which will gain speed, which will gain momentum. And hence, I'm actually quite positive that, compared to potentially 3 or 6 months ago, we will see earlier realization than before. With regard to the corresponding question of consolidation and kind of what market share we need, look. I'm a little bit -- I'm answering it a little bit different. I always said that we must be in a position from a market capitalization, from a return on equity that we can compare to others and that we are clearly not at the junior table. I think all the efforts and the success and stride which we did over the last 3 year brought us into the right position. I do believe, when I look at the start of 2022, if I look what kind of underlying business growth we have, we are well positioned actually to not only achieve our goals but also, if actually Capital Markets Union is then done, to be on eyes level with others in Europe. And that's what we want to achieve. We always said that we want to be one of the leading banks in Europe. I think in some of our business we are clearly already there. Now it's actually focusing in order to make further progress, but then I clearly can see that, from a market capitalization, from a return on equity and also from a client base we have and our international approach, I think we are in a position then also to think about the consolidation. But again I think, for this year, it's all about delivery, and there I feel confident. And then we can think further.

Stuart, very briefly on the RWA question. I would model something between EUR 415 billion and EUR 420 billion of RWA. I think that's about an 18% growth rate, so supporting the businesses [ or ] the 2.5% that we indicated and then the Basel III impact of EUR 25 billion. I hope that helps.

And then Stuart, just on your question. It's an interesting question. I'm not sure that we have so much insight into an answer to your question on European banks' exposure to commodity trading. As you mentioned, we all have [ SBLCs ]. The utilization of those tends to go up as commodity prices tend to go in the right direction. Then it's a question of how well is the counterparty actually managing the underlying volatility in the marketplace. And certainly the counterparties that we have appear to be doing that pretty professionally and have a historic track record in doing that. I can't speak for the counterparty risks that other European banks have. So when we're doing our own stress testing, we're very much focused on our counterparts in the commodity space. And I guess, finally, most of the big European banks where we have [ direct ] exposure to, well, one, we don't do commodities with them, but secondly, yes, everything is under [ CSA ]. And right now we're not seeing any big stress in terms of [ margin call demands ] increasing or margin failures or collateral disputes.

Could I just briefly say thank you very much to Stuart for all of his hard work and efforts over the years? I mean he's been a fantastic servant for Deutsche shareholders, I think. And he'll be missed very much upon his retirement.

Thanks, Stuart...

Thank you, Stuart, for saying that. That's really kind. Thank you.

Thanks, Stuart. Our next question is from Nicolas Payen at Kepler.

Yes. I have 3 actually. The first one will be on the demand side of your plan. What kind of loan growth is actually baked in into your plan for the next 3 years? Then the second question is about the cost trajectory. If I look actually at your starting point, your expected starting, in 2022; and your expecting landing point in 2025, you do not have like a big gap, so I wanted to know what kind of trajectory we should expect during the length of the plan. Is it a decrease and then a ramp-up with investments? Or is it a flat cost base, roughly flat cost base, that we should expect? And then the third question is on the cost of risk. Of course, I know that no one has a crystal ball, but is it reasonable to expect an increase in the -- in collective provisioning? And is it correct that you expect a roughly 20 basis points cost of risk for the length for your plan?

Sure. I'll jump in, Nicolas. And Stuart may want to add to the question on cost of risk. Listen. On loan growth, we're looking at sort of mid-single-digits loan growth that supports the plan going forward. Again we think that's achievable in terms of our client footprint and the mix of our businesses. And [ it's not, sort of not ] different to what we've achieved over the past several years. On the cost trajectory, I'd like to tell you it's linear. It isn't quite linear because some of the costs, take SRF for example, come off in one fell swoop in 2024, but generally what we're seeking to do is sort of earn our -- the right to invest, if you like, over time. Some of the costs, as we've talked about, in '21 to '22, of course, drop off very quickly. And after that, yes, it'll start to look a little bit more linear outside the -- outside of the SRF. On cost of risk, obviously it's there's a cycle, yes. It's very hard to predict this far out, but in a sense, we can see what we're underwriting to and what the, if you like, embedded credit risk or the -- that we underwrite to is, yes. And hence, we're looking both at the history that we've had and also the quality of the underwriting and our risk appetite over this period.

[ Stuart ]...

James, I wouldn't really add anything to that. I think you covered it well.

The next question actually comes to us in writing, so I'll read it out to you. It's a question in 3 parts. It comes from Anke Reingen at RBC. What is the inflation rate factored into the cost path on Slide 8 of the financials deck? "If inflation turns out to be higher, will you scale down investments or find more cost savings? And your VAR chart [ in ] the Russia disclosure, how has it changed since the end of Feb?" Peers have talked about change in global markets since last Friday, so curious on how that's impacted us.

Sure. Thank you. I'm not sure I caught all 3, but so on inflation, it's an interesting question. We've built in -- as we look at the line items and what the planning is across the organization, we probably estimate about a 2.5% annual rate over those 4 years, which may strike you as low, but remember it's across all of the line items. So there are some line items in our expense base that are actually relatively [ insured of -- inflation ]. I'll give you one example. We've done a lot of work, as we've talked about, on real estate. A lot of our leases don't adjust all that frequently. Some are on 5-year adjustment periods and the like, so you don't see inflation running through every line item in the same way over time. There's a mix. And of course, we're doing everything we can to fight inflation, whether that's on demand, pressuring suppliers and what have you over this period, so we think that's a reasonable assumption even in light of the pressure, but as you saw in our numbers, we've built a relatively wide buffer in for inflation. And so we think that, that should be sufficient to offset the inflationary pressures beyond that 2.5%. The biggest risk, of course, that we're looking at is people, costs of people. We want to remain competitive in attracting and retaining people at Deutsche Bank, and so that's obviously something we're looking at extremely carefully across the management team.

The VAR chart...

On the VAR. And again Stuart may want to add. Look. We'll obviously see it when the numbers are final. It's not significantly different. There's -- probably be 1 or 2 days more dramatically to the up -- to the down compensated by more dramatic to the up over the first few days of March, but we're not seeing anything in substance difference in terms of the business performance.

Yes, correct.

Great, thank you. Our next question is on Zoom, from Andrew Coombs at Citi.

If I can have a couple of numbers ones for James, please; and then one again on second- and third-order risks related to Russia and Ukraine, please, for Christian and Stuart. On the numbers questions, firstly, on Slide 42 of the first presentation, where you helpfully provide the January and February figures, can you just clarify what you're assuming for the bank levy in those figures? And also just to check how much of it gets booked January to February versus March. I know the vast majority is in Q1, but is there a split between the months as well? So that will be the first question. Second question, on the 2025 targets: If I look at your revenue and cost figures for EUR 30 billion revenues and then the EUR 18.5 billion to EUR 19 billion of costs and the 20 bps that you're guiding on cost of risk, it looks like you're guiding just over EUR 10 billion of profits. If you then assume a 30% tax rate, it looks like you've got about EUR 1 billion in minorities [ and ] AT1 coupon based on the EUR 62 billion and 10% RoTE. So just trying to work out this step-up you're expecting in AT1 coupon cost or if that's just a buffer you're building in. And then finally, on Russia second and third order. Perhaps you could just touch on the 1,500 employees you have in the Russian technology center, specifically what they're working on. And then also, anything on German manufacturing if we were to get a prolonged period of elevated gas and petroleum prices? And any cost of risk there?

Thanks, Andrew. And so we book it all in February, the bank levy. And our estimate is about EUR 600 million for the year. Now I will say there is risk to that based on the assessment basis, the calculation that the SRB does and also a question of whether we are able to use the irrevocable payment commitment availability all the way up to 30%. So unfortunately, it's something that is assumption-driven until we actually get an invoice, which typically happens in April, but the short answer to your first part of your question is it's all essentially recognized in February. In terms of the targets, you're outside-in numbers are very close to our bottoms-up planning. There is additional AT1 coupon cost as we essentially build the capital base that corresponds to the higher RWA over time, so one has to -- and also, by the way, the profitability of DWS over that period of time is -- features into that as well.

And Andrew, on your Russian tech center, the question, overall let's -- we have 1,500 people, as you rightly point out, as part of the 15,500 technology people worldwide. We have started obviously actively to work on further diversification and reducing dependency, but we take comfort from the point that in particular -- and almost everything our people in St Petersburg are doing is actually for change the bank program. So it's not that they are responsible for processes which is running the bank day by day. So we have obviously looked at this, and there's a clear derisking in this regard. So in this regard, we feel confident that, a, we don't have a too big dependency on that. B, we are working on alternatives. And I do think that we are making good progress on that. HR and the TDI organization are all over it. With regard to the second- and third-order risk in the German manufacturing, look. As I said, it's very early to give you a final view. Of course, this will have an impact in particular on the -- one or the other company. It always depends how much revenues for certain companies come out of Russia, what the export ratio is to Russia. And therefore, kind of a broad-based answer does not really make sense and does not fit the purpose, but let me also say that overall from Germany, if you look at the overall German exports, 2% -- slightly above 2% goes through -- to Russia. Again I have the privilege that I can talk to the German [ DACs ] but also family-owned company, which is the backbone in the German economy. The way they diversify away; the way they reorganize supply chains, whether it is in the [ order ] supply industry, in the automotive industry, in the manufacturing, is quite admiring. And therefore, I would say, with the robustness and resilience these companies have, I think they're -- they have a very good chance also to navigate through this crisis. There will be the one or the others who will suffer, but overall also looking at our portfolio, I feel confident that they can master this crisis. And hence, we are also on top of that.

I mean I guess the concern is that 2/3 of German gas imports are from Russia, as opposed to the exports, so it's more about that as an input cost, but as you said, it's early days.

I agree. I agree. It's -- on the one hand, it's early days, but the German government is very clear at least in its attitude. And I just said it this morning, and it was reconfirmed last night and this morning, that the German [ governor ] knows that there is obviously the dependency. They are working on medium-term and long-term diversification, but that also means they know that simply from our side, as part of sanctions, cutting off the Russian gas supply is not an option. And that was reconfirmed, but on the other hand, I can also see, and that is all about the flexibility which we will see also with our German corporates, that also the corporates are actually working now already. What else can they do? How can they prepare for worst case? And there I do think that there is a certain degree of resilience, but of course, in a worst-case scenario, that picture would then look different.

Thanks, Andrew. So we have 2 questions coming up, our last 2 questions, 1 on chat and 1 via Zoom. We'll take the Zoom one first, from [indiscernible] from Federated Hermes.

Both my questions just relate to sustainability, which you've previously touched upon. So my first question is that we understand that your plan is to complete the exit from thermal coal mining by 2025 and just wanted to know whether you could confirm whether the coal mining and power generation will just include clients with 50% or greater threshold of revenue. And if not, would you consider lowering this and additionally assessing an absolute threshold for coal mining companies? And then the second part of my question is just we welcome the -- your sector-specific targets that you recently set out in the white paper published on the 4th of March regarding oil and gas, automotive, steel, power generation; and using the IEA net zero emissions benchmark that is aligned to 1.5. Could you provide a bit more detail on how the bank plans to meet these targets? Will you engage with your clients who are lagging behind sector-wide decarbonization? And how will you limit or ultimately withdraw financing from companies failing to transition?

Well, thank you very much for your question. Let me start with the second question. I think one item which we always put to the heart of the sustainability discussion and topic is actually to be in the most intense dialogue we can with our clients in order to exactly tackle the questions you just gave, in particular the second one. So we have an active dialogue with our clients not in order to come up and says, well, we are not financing anew but to talk about the transition. And that, we are doing with all of our clients, obviously starting with the largest one, starting with those where the carbon footprint is obviously the biggest one, but we have a kind of a client-by-client strategy how we are going over this transformation and transition to net zero. To your first question, yes, you are right with citing that policy. I do have to say, before I'm now saying wrong things, I will take that home and give you, in particular with regard to your percentage questions, a detailed and correct answer, before I say a wrong thing here live in the studio.

And so I think the last question comes from the chat; and it's probably one for you, Christian. "How do your regional strategies look like in the context of the Global Hausbank positioning you mentioned? What do you -- how do you see that playing for Asia and the U.S.?"

Yes. Thank you very much. Look. One thing is always clear when we talk about Deutsche Bank. We have a robust home market. We are proud to be here in the home market in Germany, but we always said that the real asset of Deutsche Bank is that we have the international outreach. And that makes us different to a lot of other German banks, but that makes us also so close to our clients, be it on the private wealth management but in particular be it on the corporate side. So that means that we will obviously make sure that our international approach is unchanged. We are investing into our franchise in Asia in particular. I think the Asia-Europe bridge will become ever more important. And in this regard, we are there with all our 4 businesses, but if I think about the network we have of the Corporate Bank, if I think what we are investing there but also in private wealth management, Asia is becoming ever more important. And in the U.S., we are in particular focusing on the Investment Bank. And I think we have very strong pockets in the U.S., yes, in the Origination & Advisory, in the financing businesses where we want to grow. And what is most important about the U.S. is actually that we deliver the one bank concept and the Global Hausbank there, that we connect even better the offerings we have between the Investment Bank and the Corporate Bank. I think we made good progress over the last years. We are sustainably profitable again in the U.S. And therefore, U.S. and Asia are key. And Deutsche Bank, whatever happens, will always be an international banks. We want to be at the side of our clients. Germany is an export market, so we will be an international bank.

Thank you, Christian. So that now takes us to the end of our event. Before I hand back to you for your closing remarks, the investor relations team would like to thank everyone who has listened to our presentations today. If you do have any remaining questions, we are, of course, here to help. You can contact us through the usual channels, including the IR e-mail address [email protected]. And with that, let me hand back to you, Christian.

This brings us to the end of our Investor Day. We thank you all for joining us today and in particular for your questions in the last session. Of course, we are aware that 3.5 hours is not enough time to answer all of your questions, particular what is happening around us. However, it was very important to us, especially in view of the current uncertainties, that we share with you, our key stakeholders, how we want to evolve our strategy. After all, one core element of our Global Hausbank positioning is precisely that we want to continue to support our clients in navigating difficult times. That's what makes us so powerful. That's why we see so much room for opportunity. We wanted to show you today that we believe Deutsche Bank is a transformed company with a robust balance sheet, a strong platform and a clear long-term strategy and vision for sustainable growth; confident of delivery for our clients, our shareholders and our employees, so we hope you found this afternoon insightful. And we are committed to maintaining a close dialogue with all of you. Our next touch point will be our Q1 results on April 27. In the meantime, Ioana and her team are always available for any follow-ups. We say thank you once more and look forward to speaking to you again soon.