EFG International AG (EFGN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome again from us here in Zurich. Thank you for your attendance of the first half 2021 results presentation of EFG International. Unfortunately, obviously, also, again, in a virtual format. But obviously, we unfortunately have gotten used to this format over the last years. As in the past, I'm joined by Giorgio Pradelli, CEO of EFG International; and Dimitris Politis, CFO of EFG International. As usual, I also point out the disclaimer on the front of our presentation as being read. As the operator just already announced, we obviously will have presentations and afterwards, we will have time for Q&A. So thank you very much again and therefore I hand over to Giorgio. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Jens, and good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to be here and to start this presentation for our first half results for this year, for 2021. As it is customary, I will start with the key highlights of our performance. After that, I will hand over the floor to Dimitris for a detailed analysis of our financial performance, and I will close with the outlook and our strategic priorities going forward. In terms of the key highlights, I am now on Page 4. We are very pleased. We are very pleased with this set of results. We started the year well. We had a good first quarter, but actually in the second quarter, we even accelerated in terms of growth. And as you can see, our business growth was 5.3%. This is a combination of a good first quarter, but an even better second quarter where we were in excess of 6%. I'm very pleased to report that this is the ninth consecutive quarter that we are growing, and this allowed us to achieve our whole-time high in terms of assets under management at over CHF 170 billion. What is very pleasing though is that growth is also translating into profitability. As you can see, in terms of IFRS profitability, we tripled our profit, our net profit to over CHF 100 million. And in terms of underlying profitability, we more than doubled at CHF 82 million. Obviously, these numbers are good. We are pleased with them. It shows the progress and it shows from a quantitative perspective, what we have been doing. But equally, we are very pleased with the qualitative aspects of our business. We have been not only growing, not only improving our profitability but also improving the quality of our business. We have invested over the last few years a lot in Investment Solutions, in asset management, wealth solutions, credit solutions to deliver content to our clients, and we want to become more investment-led than just a figure, 2/3 of our revenues are now net commission income, and we have been growing the net commission income more than 35% over the last 2 years. While we become more investment led, we continue to improve our efficiency and benefit from operational leverage. We improved our revenues by over 5%. We decreased our costs by 4%. And obviously, this has a very dramatic impact on our profitability figures. We continue at the same time to rationalize our global footprint while we improve the efficiency of our core centers. And we were also able to substantially derisk our legacy position in the life insurance portfolio. Last but not least, and this for me is extremely important, obviously, for shareholders and investors, we continue to create organically capital to generate capital, and this is obviously very important and gives also a strong foundation for future growth. So to close for our 2022 strategic plan that we announced 2 years ago, we are on track. And on this note, I hand over the floor to Dimitris for a detailed presentation of our financial performance in the first semester 2021. Dimitris.

Thank you, Giorgio, and welcome to the people on Webex or on the telephone. I'm very pleased to present this set of financial results for the first semester of 2021. What I'd like to do before we go into the actual figures is underline 4 themes that you'll be hearing throughout the presentation on the financials today. The first one, Giorgio already mentioned, is 1 about consistent growth. He mentioned the 9 consecutive quarters. This is a very strong performance over the last 2.5 years. The second 1 is that operating leverage is now driving a step change in profitability. That was evident in the second half of last year. It continues in the first half of this year, and we expect it to continue going forward. The third point is about quality of earnings, and this comes with a high contribution of commissions also with a high contribution of the annuity business as part of the commissions. And finally, it's about active management of the legacy portfolios. We know these portfolios were generated back in 2007, 2006, 2008. It is our duty to actively manage. And actually, we have some positive results to mention in this set of results. So moving on to Page 9, where we have the key figures. As you see, CHF 4.2 billion of net new assets, annualized growth rate of 5.3%. AUMs up to an accord CHF 172 billion as at the end of June 2021, 36 new CROs hired we'll go back to the CRO hiring pattern a bit later on. Very strong operating leverage. Revenues up 5%, costs down 4%. This doubles the underlying net profit plus the contribution from the legacy, we have a tripling of the IFRS net profit. Clearly, this performance is very good compared to the first half of 2020, but it's also up compared to the second half of last year. So we are 7% up on underlying profit and 32% up on reported IFRS profit compared to the second half of last year. Underlying cost-to-income at 79.6%, 8 percentage points down compared to the first half of last year. Clearly, we continue being very disciplined in cost management, and we have even more actions coming in the second half of this year and also carrying into 2022. And we will talk about the substantial derisking we managed to achieve through an agreement in principle with Transamerica, which also had a positive impact in our P&L. Finally and not least, capital. We generated organically 100 basis points of capital in the first half of the year. We also issued $400 million of Tier 1 in January 2021. So all in all, we have a very strong capital position. 16.5% core Tier 1, 22.2% total capital, which is also improving organically in the first 6 months of the year. We'll skip Page 10, which is a summary of the -- of all the financials. Page 11 is a depiction of our performance. As we said, very consistent in growing net new assets at the top left, cost-to-income improving over the last few semesters. Underlying net profit underlying profit -- operating profit plus 70% year-on-year and a tripling of the IFRS profit compared to the first half of 2020. Page 12 describes the impact of operating leverage. As I said, operating leverage is a key driver for us this semester, and we expect them to continue going forward. So you will see that we increased revenues by CHF 29.5 million, and we decreased costs by CHF 19.4 million. This is compared to the first half of 2020. And we managed to get our underlying operative profit up 70% to CHF 118.5 million. Cost-to-income at 79%. This is driven mostly by strong commissions on the revenue side and also high quality of commissions. For us, the way forward is about managing this positive impact of operating leverage. And as I said, we expect it to continue in the semesters to come. Page 13 marks the our performance in the what we call the non-underlying items. As you see, we have a very strong contribution from the life insurance portfolio this time. This largely stems from our settlement in principle with Transamerica on some disputed increases in COI in premium payments in the past and going forward. For us, it is not just about the managing and getting the result in the P&L. It is also about substantially derisking our litigation risk in these cases. Transamerica represented about half of that potential litigation risk so at least now half of that is off the books, and we still have ongoing procedures with another 3 carriers, which are coming up in the future. Page 14 is the progression of the net new assets. You see the CHF 4.2 billion of net new assets generated over the period, clearly favorable market and currency conditions. But 1 thing to note is that we would have been at even higher levels. But as you know, we have decided to exit some businesses. So we have a CHF 3.2 billion reduction in AUM because of disposals of the corporate and personal business in Ticino and of our subsidiary in Paris, Oudart, that brings us to CHF 172 billion of assets under management on the 30th of June. And we are also mentioning here our pro forma figure of CHF 158.7 billion, excluding our participation stake in AYG, which is a Spanish subsidiary. We announced that transaction back in April. So when that completes, we will be roughly at the same levels as at the beginning of the year. On the right-hand side, you see the mix of how these NNA were generated. We've always mentioned starting back in 2019 that we will now have 3 levers to pull to grow the business. Clearly, in this semester, the existing CROs have had a high contribution than new CROs or new businesses. But overall, starting from the 1st of January 2019 to date, so in the course of the last 2.5 years, we had about 40% of our NNAs from existing CROs, 30% of our NNAs from new CROs and 30% of our NNAs from new locations. So it's a very balanced growth over the last 2.5 years. Page 15 is the progression of our CRO numbers. Over the last 5 years or 6 years, we have been driving the efficiency of our CROs as much as possible. It is very critical for us. The size of AUMs per CRO is not per se critical but it is a very good indication of how efficiently you can grow the business. It's the same as consolidating booking center. So the bigger the booking center, the more efficient you are, the larger the CRO, the more efficient you are, and it's a key parameter that we are following, and we are driving through very strength performance measurement. What you'll see is that we hired 36 CROs in the period, hired or signed 36 CROs in the period are -- we have a net decrease of 22, but about half of that decrease is driven by the exits. And more importantly, we've managed to grow our AUM per CRO excluding the new hires to 295 million. That's at the bottom right chart, which is clearly a very big growth compared to 2015, but it's also a substantial growth of 24% compared to the same time last year under the same parameters. Page 16 is a breakdown of our regional growth. I think we are very happy to see Switzerland and Italy growing at the rates that we're growing. If you remember, 2 years ago, back in March 2019, when we were introducing the plan, we had a first step of stabilizing Switzerland and then growing it. Clearly, at 4.9% growth, we are in very strong growth territory. Also, the other positive element is that from all the regions, Switzerland has the highest return on AUM. So that will help us drive our margins higher as we move forward. I think the key point to note here is that we have a very good performance in Switzerland. U.K. has come in at very high growth rates, also with a very high margin. Continental Europe and the EFGAM business is also contributing. Asia was lower. It was in part due to deleveraging. As you'll see, excluding the loans, it was in positive territory. And we look forward to more positive performance by our Latin America business going forward. Page 17 captures our performance in the -- what Giorgio called the investment-led part of the business. We have been growing our evolution and our penetration of advisory and discretionary mandates. It's now at 56%, excluding loans and also excluding externally asset -- externally managed assets. What gives us comfort is the actual performance of the advice that we're giving. We give you some indications on that. So in terms of our discretionary strategies, we are in top quartile over the 1-, 3- and 5-year period. Our new capital funds, we have 71% of our new capital funds with 4- or 5-star ratings for Morningstar. So 71%, you will also get some more information on the following page. But I think also more importantly, we have been investing over the last 5 years, but also even more recently in terms of developing our capabilities. So we are now a lot more into the thematic product launches, which have gained a lot more momentum. We are more into the ESG discretionary side of the business, and we believe that this will help us further increase our penetration for the advisory and mandate part of the business. Page 18 is a graphic of the performance. I know it's -- there are many ways of depicting this performance. So you see here how many new capital funds we operate. Five years ago, we were at about 7. Now we are double that. Even more so, if you see in the last 2 years, the performance of these has been very good, and we have about always around 65% to 70% or 75% of our new capital funds in the 4- to 5-star category as rated by Morningstar. Now going into revenues on Page 19. Revenues were up 5%. You see that this has been largely driven by commissions growing at 17%. Clearly, the weak point is the net interest income, but we all know that the low interest environment is not helping. We believe that we've seen the bottoms of the net interest income and the impact from interest rates, largely because the majority of our portfolio repricing on a 1-month, 3-month and 6-month period. So given the fact that the rates dropped around April, May, June last year, we know that the impact is largely now reflected in the first half results of this year. We had some tailwinds clearly. AUMs were higher. We had some good client activity in the first quarter of the year, although in the second quarter, that was not really the case. More importantly, in terms of the things that we can actually manage on the top right, we will give you an indication of how the gross advisory and management fees, so what we call the annuity business has been developing. And you will see that there's been a significant jump in the first half of this year compared to previous years. Also, the repricing actions continue. We expect more to come in the second half of the year and to spill over in 2022. So we are very pleased to see that the commission margin went up from 44 basis points to 46 basis points when I compare the first half of 2021 to the first half of 2020. On the expense side, I'm sure that this will not surprise you. We've been cost managing for the last 5 years. We've managed to get costs down 4% year-on-year in the first half of 2021. This is all about discipline. This is about trying to figure out the last bit of cost management you can actually do. This is a lot about automation. It's about increasing the STP side of the business, reducing the manual work and centralizing. There's plenty more actions that are in train as we speak, and we expect to continuously manage our cost base going forward. Clearly, the biggest driver here is through the reduction of -- on the personnel side, which is the bulk of it. And again, this is more about becoming more automating, becoming more digital and taking advantage of technology. Having said that, we also embarked in late 2019 in a transformational project for EFG when we revisited international footprint. What you see on the map is the core offshore private banking booking centers, including also Shaw and Partners, so we have the 8 core offshore booking centers noted on the map. And what we decided in late 2019 is to launch a project to address the low margin and high cost to income booking centers. At the end of the day, the project scope comes to about 300 FTEs, project scope comes to about CHF 70 million of annual expenses and encompasses about CHF 16 billion of assets under management. We have some actions that we have already completed. So Chile, the Personal and Corporate business in Ticino, Oudart in France. We also have announced another 3 actions, Luxembourg fund management company, restructuring our Guernsey business and the disposal of our stake in Spain and in AYG. The first 2 are expected this year, AYG should be completed by the first quarter of 2022. I would say that the majority of what is included in the project scope will come this year and with the disposal of AYG in the first quarter of 2022. So we are looking forward to improving our efficiency through all these actions. And again, there are 2 elements in this efficiency gain. One is the actual reduction in expenses or improvement in cost-to-income ratio through the disposal or the restructuring. The second is releasing resources, other management resources, capital resources, liquidity resources through these actions so that we focus in our core booking centers and these core booking centers can be a lot more efficient in producing profits than these smaller stand-alone and less efficient booking centers. A very quick look on the balance sheet on Page 22. Clearly, a lot of liquidity, 52% loan-to-deposit, 202% LCR as at the 30th of June 2021. So really no issue in terms of growing the business because of liquidity -- actually liquidity has increased over the last 6 months. And moving on to capital on Page 23, you will see that our capital ratios under Swiss GAAP are 16.5% core Tier 1 capital and 22.2% total capital. They have increased compared to the end of December. 30 basis points for core capital and substantially more for total capital because of the issuance of the $400 million Tier 1 instrument we issued in January. The story here is about organic capital generation, which we continue and also the successful placement of the Tier 1. What you should note is 2 things: one, the execution of the footprint project will further add to these capital ratios as especially Spain is expected to add 90 basis points of capital when it is closed. The second point to note is that we always included our IFRS capital ratios as a footnote because our regulatory requirement is under Swiss GAAP. So you'll see now that our IFRS ratios 16.4% core Tier 1 and 22.4% total capital are practically the same as our Swiss capital adequacy figures. To close on capital. Capital generation was very strong. So we had 100 basis points of underlying P&L in the first 6 months. We had an effective reduction in risk-weighted assets. Also, if you take into account the currency movements in the period. And we have been accruing dividends worth 50 basis points. So that's -- on a net basis, it's 100 basis points capital creation. And we also have some other items, which include the non-underlying incremental acquisition we made for Shaw and Partners on some other currency items that reduced it by 60 basis points. Again, the net is a 30% increase in our core Tier 1 capital under Swiss GAAP. To close, I'll go to the same page that we've been using for the last 2.5 years, which describes our execution of the plan. Giorgio mentioned, we are on track, and we are on track. I'll focus mostly on the right-hand side of the page. I think that the left-hand side is pretty much something in the past. So it is about operational efficiency. It's about becoming more digital. This is all parts of the projects that we are running nowadays. We do have excess capital. We will create even more excess capital. So we are willing to engage in discussion about acquisitions to figure out how we best use this excess capital going forward. Switzerland back to growth. It's growing by 5% and annualized in the first half of this year. We expect it to continue growing in these rates going forward. And clearly, management of all the legacy positions is a must. It's something for us. It's a matter of avoiding the negative surprises and making sure we maximize the value we can get from these assets, and we will continue doing so going forward. On that note, I'd like to close and pass the floor to Giorgio for his final say on outlook and strategic priorities. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Dimitris. And now to close, we will focus on the outlook and the strategic priorities. But before that, I wanted to put this and the future quarters in the context of what we have been doing over the last few years and what we intend to do in the next few quarters and next year. We go back here on this slide. I'm on Slide 27. We go back to the acquisition/integration of BSI. We add at a time, CHF 84 billion of assets under management. And over the last few years, we managed to over double that. 2019, when we announced the strategic plan, the 2022 strategic plan. This was the year when, so to speak, we had to warm up the engine for growth. We say here seeding for growth. Last year, clearly, nobody expected the pandemic, but this was, for us, a test to demonstrate our strong resilience, both in operational and financial terms. This year, our objective was to maintain the growth momentum and also to achieve new levels of profitability. Dimitris spoke about step change in profitability. And obviously, from next year and beyond, we want to unlock our full potential. In terms of strategy and strategic focus, we remain focused on 3 areas: clients, content and simplicity. If our strategy is sustainable and profitable growth. Obviously, we need to be outward looking. Obviously, we need to focus on clients. You can only grow if clients like what you're doing. We are convinced that our client relationship officers are second to none in our industry to deliver a superior service to our clients. We want to be very close to our clients. Clients proximity is very important for us. We said that on 1 hand, we want to rationalize our locations, our network, our presence globally. On the other hand, if we need to be close to our clients, we do not hesitate to open like we did 2 years ago an office in Dubai and an office in Lisbon. Obviously, what we do not need a new booking center, but proximity to client is extremely important. What do clients also like? They like open architecture in partial and independent advice, they trust us for that. But obviously, service is only 1 side of the metal. The other side of the metal is content. We want to deliver also the best possible solutions for our clients to manage their financial and family affair. So we have been investing over the last years a lot in comprehensive first-class investment wealth and credit solutions. We want to maintain a very strong performance in everything we do. And obviously, ESG and sustainability going forward will be more and more important. It's all about clients. It's all about the next generation, and it's all about for us as a financial institution to allocate the capital and the resources to the companies that will identify the technologies and the innovation to solve the issues of sustainability going forward. Obviously, we want to do more in alternative investments in the new private equity fund that we're going to be launched and private debt. And clearly, digital is critical, not only for improving efficiency but also for delivering services to our clients. The last point is about simplicity. I think we talked a lot about operational efficiency, operational leverage, rationalization, simplification, reducing complexity. We want to become leaner and this will allow us to be more agile and also faster in going -- in growing further. In terms of the outlook and priorities. Well, we see that the markets remain supportive on the wake of expansionary monetary and fiscal policy. We don't see a material change in interest rates for the next quarters. Clearly, the investor sentiment remains sensitive to the pandemic and also to overall geopolitical developments. But all in all, we are very positive for the next semester. And in terms of our priority, clearly, maintaining the business momentum is must improving the efficiency and reducing complexity is a key priority. And it goes without saying that regulatory compliance and risk management is and will remain a prerequisite for sustainable growth. But I would like in closing to focus on the last 2 bullet points on the right-hand side of Page 29. I've been asked recently of what I was proud about the developments of the last few years. And I said without any hesitation that I'm very proud of our teams. I think our business is all about people. Our business is all about talent. And therefore, to attract, retain and motivate the top talent is a key priorities for us for the next quarters, but also for the next year to come. And we want to attract the best and motivate and develop the best talent not only in the client-facing areas, but also overall across the board in all corporate functions. And also, we believe that obviously, EFG has a strong competitive advantage, and we need to promote more the image and the brand of EFG, and we want to achieve a higher brand visibility going forward. At the end of the day, it's all about competitive market positioning, and this is what we want to improve in the next quarters and the years to come. With this, I pose and I hand over to Jens for opening the Q&A. Thank you.

Thank you, Giorgio. And thank you, Dimitris, for your very insightful presentations today. So as announced earlier, we will now move to the question-and-answer session. So if I can ask the operator, please, if we can have the first question from the telephone line. Thank you.

The first question comes from the line of Daniele Brupbacher with UBS.

I wanted to ask about costs and then also pricing actions and probably cash returns, if I can. On the cost outlook, together with full year results, Dimitris, you gave quite some detailed expectations or guidance with regards to this year. And I think it was something like that you would expect this year costs to be somewhere between the annualized H2 2020 level and the underlying level of 2020 overall when it comes to underlying costs. Is this something you feel comfortable reiterating? So that's the first question. And then you talked a lot about pricing actions in various dimensions. Can you just tell us how much that helped? Obviously, we only see the net numbers, but how much it helps and how much more you think you can do on that front? And then just lastly on cash returns, capital ratios are high and strong. And I was just wondering how you think about cash returns in general also bearing in mind things like relatively low free float and some other topics, how you think about cash returns for me onwards?

Daniele, let me take the cost question. Yes, as you said, when we came out with the results at the end of the year, clearly, we had an exceptional second half in terms of cost. So we guided away from that and somewhere between the full year and the annualizing in the second half. At this point, there are 2 elements which are would lead me to say that we are going to be higher than that guidance. One is our revenue growth is higher than what we were expecting, primarily on the back of higher balances. This is not what we're expecting the appreciation. And that leads to higher variable compensation. So that is 1 element which will add. The second 1 is slightly more technical, which is that since the time that we were talking, we had some very significant currency movements. And as you know, about 50% of our costs are in non-Swiss denominated countries. And that leads also to some incremental hit on the cost line. Clearly, the currency effect on a net basis does not create any negative impact on the P&L because also your revenues benefit. But if you're just looking at the cost line, we are easily talking from the time that we are speaking to about, on an annual basis, about CHF 15 million of additional cost simply because of currency translation. So all in all, that's the 2 parameters, which would differentiate any thinking from the time that we are reporting back in February, the full year results. Again, having said that, the -- we maintain our 72% to 75% cost-to-income target for 2022. So I think the target is exactly the same. Clearly, the journey getting to that target might be slightly different in terms of mix between revenues and costs because of the parameters that I just described. I don't know, Giorgio, if you want to take the question on pricing or?

On pricing, yes, Daniele, nice to hear from you since we cannot see each other. In terms of pricing, well, for us, obviously, this is a critical element of our strategy. We are trying to attack it in across various dimensions. One is obviously the penetration of high-margin products. We report on Page 17, the penetration, as you have seen, of our mandates, obviously, structured products, advisory, discretionary and funds are, I would say, the higher-margin products. We are improving on those. We will continue. I think, as I mentioned earlier, and Dimitris as well, I think the quality of our investment solutions is improving continuously. And obviously, our focus is on net commission income. I think that we will -- we have been hit obviously by the net interest income. And clearly, on that, we cannot expect much. So all the focus will be on net commission income. We believe that these measures will improve the return on AUM quite substantially. Now the question is obviously the timing of that. The other dimension is for us clearly to look at the various businesses and the various client relationship officers and look at the average of their books and trying to have strategies to improve their performance. So there is a lot of, let's say, performance management now not only on the growth that was what we were doing a few years back, but a lot, obviously, on margin quality of earnings, as I was describing.

A very solid capital levels, we are also increasing through some of the footprint actions. Already back in 2019, we've always mentioned that our priority would be to find suitable acquisition targets to complement our organic growth through some nonorganic M&A growth. We've done one, which was Shaw and Partners and over the last couple of years we have also topped up our participation, which is now at 75%. We are in the market and trying to figure out or identify targets that could work for us. I think that would be the best use of the excess capital that we have. Now in the absence of that, we could possibly discuss some return of this excess capital to shareholders. There are many ways of doing it. Depending on which side of the Atlantic you live, you prefer either cash dividend, an extraordinary cash dividend or a buyback. You know that for us, buybacks are a bit more difficult because we have a more limited free float. But again, this is a discussion to be had after we have exhausted our possibilities of doing acquisitions, which could very much increment our ability to produce profits. So it's a deferred discussion, if you wish, for the time being.

The next question comes from the line of Nicholas Herman with Citigroup.

So I have a couple of questions as well. So firstly, on net new money. And I'm just curious if you can talk a bit about what drove, what laid -- where you saw -- where was the big deltas in NNA in quarter versus Q1 regionally or otherwise. Secondly, on your lending for what was part of the NNA in the first half. I mean is this a run rate growth rate that you're happy with? Are you looking to do a bit more than that? Just curious that we have on capacity? Third question would be pretty on your demand. Can I just -- you mentioned in pretty well in terms of growing thematic. There's no margin difference here on the basis of the mandate is it's more just [indiscernible] And then on the...

We don't hear you very well. The line is a bit disturbed. I don't know. We have heard your first 2 questions. You started breaking up the third question, so. So we heard about NNA and about lending.

Yes, sorry, on the mandates, can I just [indiscernible]

We lost connection with the question. Let's take the next question coming from the line of Adam Terelak with Mediobanca.

Contain to Nicholas. I want a question on loan growth. It looks like an FX adjusted basis, loan growth be really limited. I just wanted to comment there in terms of risk appetite, appears we're saying, actually, demand for loans is slightly higher. So just a comment on that would be helpful. Similarly, a question on CRO hiring. It's within kind of the right scope of your 17 net hires a year. But clearly, first half is slightly slower and whether that reflects anything in terms of the backdrop for hiring, whether it's any more difficult or opportunities or slightly less? And then finally, just a quick question on the rationalization program. You give us the total cost figure of CHF 70 million. Obviously, in the Spanish disposal, we've got some numbers from your annual. I just wanted to understand how much more capital to be released from that and then the phasing of the cost savings, about CHF 70 million, how much is attached to Spain, how much is in the run rate already in the disposal that are already gone and how much is to come through the second half of this year? And then a comment on revenues opposite that, what's the P&L kind of contribution? Obviously, you can test the cost, but not the other side, that would be great.

Let me just give you some information on the growth rate of loans, just to set the scene before Giorgio takes in the substance. Our net new assets, which includes loans, grew at 5.3% annualized. If you exclude loans, so if you just look at net new money, then the growth was similar. So we have been growing our loans pretty much at the same rate as we have been growing our managed assets as well. So there is no differentiation in the last months. And if you look also at the back of the presentation, loans accounted for 12% of AUM in December, and they still account for 12% of AUM in June 2021. So there is no differentiation in growth between the 2 areas. But I'll pass it to Giorgio for more.

Yes. Thank you, Dimitris. No. Obviously, for us, lending is a strategic product or service. We believe that is part of private banking offering. We -- obviously, with this level of interest rates, a lot of our clients like to leverage up their assets. We believe that it is strategic, both in terms of lumber lending, which is about 2/3 of our loan book and real estate financing, which is about 1/3 of our book. Clearly -- and we like lending. We are growing it as Dimitris said, at the same pace of the rest of the asset classes. Our ratio is about 12% of AUM. We could grow a bit. But for us, what is important is, number one, that we give our -- the use, so to speak, of our balance sheet to strategic clients. So we want clients that do with us everything, the investment side, the structuring side and the lending side. So this is extremely important. Obviously, it goes without saying that the credit component has to be fair with us. And then pricing. We have a very clear target in terms of covering liquidity cost and capital charges. And therefore, we believe that for strategic clients, with a good credit at the right price, we like to do lending if some of these conditions are not there, then we will never, let's say, how should I say, subsidized growth through lending. Question, if I may, on CRO hiring. I will say that CRO hiring is, as you said, is within the range that the order of magnitude that we mentioned 2.5 years ago, I think we had 36 this semester. Obviously, there was last year a bit in the second and third quarter, a bit of, let's say, the market dried up a bit given the lockdowns that we have experienced throughout the planet. I think that this year, the situation has improved. And we are hiring teams. We focus mainly on teams throughout the various regions. I think we have a good pipeline. But again, for us, as I mentioned at the end of my presentation, the focus has to be on talent. The focus has to be on quality. The 70 to 100, let's say, soft target that we included 2.5 years ago is more an order of magnitude. We believe, again, that usually, in a normal year, we are within that range, but the focus remains a target. Now if you ask me where are we recruiting? I would say, across the board, in all 5 regions, all our teams are very much focused in attracting new talents in this respect.

To your third and fourth questions, which are generally around footprint, just to mention that the -- or to repeat that the Spanish transaction will add 90 basis points of capital when closed, and we hope to get it closed in by the first quarter of 2022. And in general, on the footprint, in the footprint numbers that are presented on Page 21, I would say that about 70% to 80% of that relates to the disposal of in Spain. So clearly, that is to come in the next few months. So we expect that benefit to roll in later. In terms of what would all this mean to the bottom line, all these actions taken together are almost neutral to the bottom line. So all taken together, we expect to have also an equivalent reduction in revenues. And again, the idea of all these actions is that we reduce complexity. We focus management on -- mostly on the offshore private banking booking centers, and we tried to improve the efficiency of these booking centers through a set of strategic actions so that we improve the overall profitability and performance of the firm.

So I think we try Citi again. The line got better. Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Herman, your line is open.

Can you hear me?

Yes. Nick, we can hear you.

Okay. Great. A couple of questions, please. On costs, I'm just trying to understand how much did variable compensation increased by second half of 2020. I think you mentioned that the full year results that the true run rate costs for the second half was about CHF 460 million then we've had an additional FX impact that probably takes you around CHF 470 million, but your cost came out that. So just trying to understand how -- what was -- two is on the fee margin. And were there any performance fees in there, please? And then finally, on your project footprint, you mentioned the 90 basis points capital benefit from the Spanish transaction. What is the net capital impact from the other transactions, please?

Should I take -- let me start with the cost question. So the cost question, as you said, it depends because we never gave an exact figure on what is the exit run rate. As you say, if you take CHF 460 million, the actual number that we printed now is CHF 467 million, if I'm not mistaken. So the difference you have there is simply accounted for by the movement in currencies. So well, CHF 466 million is the number that we put out for underlying. So that pretty much matches what you're saying, Nick, in terms of the performance of cost this year. Clearly, we've had some more higher accrual for incentives for variable compensation. At the same time, you have cost actions that happened last year, which are kicking in, in terms of hitting the bottom line this year. So there's a lot of moving parts. But in terms of where we are now, I think that the CHF 466 million of underlying operating expense is a solid base in terms of thinking about progression of cost, and it doesn't include anything which is either largely negative or positive in terms of how you should be thinking about cost today or cost going forward. You asked about performance fees, if I heard well in the question. There's a very limited figure for performance fees included in the revenues I'm talking about small single-digit figure included in the revenue line for the first half of 2021.

Now I could...

I think we had 1 question that I have seen in writing that basically, he was asking in the beginning from the NNA, where the difference was between the first quarter, second quarter and regions, if you can make any comments where we had that or if it was the same picture.

In terms of the NNA development, I would say that we had positive developments overall. In terms of now the regional breakdown, as you can see on Page 16, we didn't have major differences between I would say, Q1 and Q2, I would say that we had a good, obviously, Switzerland, Continental Europe and the U.K., we are very pleased that we have 3 regions plus the EFGAM side that are all growing over CHF 1 billion. And all these 3 regions plus EFGAM, they all been growing both in Q1 and Q2. In LatAm, I think that we had actually some positive developments in second -- in the second quarter. And I think that the pipeline is very positive. We already commented about Asia Pacific about the deleveraging. And also here, the pipeline for the second half of the year is very encouraging and quite good. So I think that there were no major differences between Q1 and Q2. I believe that in Asia and Latin America, we will see a better acceleration in the second half from the visibility we have today.

That's very helpful. So can you hear me. Great. So 1 last question I had was you've guided to 90 basis points capital benefit from the Spanish transaction. In terms of the other transactions, what is the net capital impact from those other transactions, please?

The total should be on a net basis, 20, 30 basis points. And some of it was coming through the sale of the Ticino business, and it has already been included in the results that you see to date. So there's no material.

Let me rephrase then. So in terms of then the actions, the exits that you still have to come, so I think there's another CHF 13 billion. Does that mean the outstanding capital -- net capital impact is 90 basis points maybe I understood?

Yes. Look, I think for the purposes of discussion, the real impact going forward is going to be Spain and Spain is 90 basis points. Now the remaining actions going forward are really marginal in terms of capital impact. So I think in your mind, if you use 90 basis points as the net impact going forward, that, that is a reasonable assumption.

The next question comes from the line of Andreas Venditti with Vontobel.

Actually, most of my questions have been answered. Just actually 1 more technical or detailed one. And you mentioned it when you discussed your capital ratio, the difference between Swiss GAAP and IFRS used to be quite large. I think last time, if I had correctly in mind, almost 300 basis points at the end of the year, this has disappeared in the first half. I did not have time to look through the pillar 3 report because there was another company reporting this morning. But maybe you can guide us through why this step change there in terms of difference of the capital?

Sure, Andreas. And you're right, we had about 250 to 300 basis points difference in previous reporting dates. The -- I would say, the 3 major differences or the 3 major items that we've managed to do -- we manage that led to closing, the difference was, a, the IFRS profitability is higher than the Swiss GAAP profitability simply because -- or largely because the accounting for the life insurance portfolio is different. And under IFRS, we fair value the portfolio under Swiss GAAP with a hold-to-maturity approach. So the gains that we've recorded this time are not there under Swiss GAAP. The second point is that on -- if you look at our annual -- half year report, in the other comprehensive income, we had about CHF 95 million of positive benefit in the other comprehensive income from the pension liability. This is because the assets in the pension fund have increased substantially over the last 6 months. And finally, also in the other comprehensive income, there's about CHF 45 million of currency translation differences, which went our way. This is due to the Swiss weakening compared to other currencies in the first 6 months. So you -- simply from the other comprehensive income, you have about CHF 150 million of gap being addressed, and the rest is through profitability and some other minor items. So all these things taken together, bridge the gap between IFRS and Swiss GAAP capital ratios.

The next question comes from the line of Michael Kunz with ZKB.

Yes. Hello. Can you hear me?

Yes, very well.

Excellent. More strategic questions, not so much number crunching. The first is referring to Shaw and Partners in Australia. This business seems to be detrimental for the gross margin, and it doesn't help the AUM per CRO either. Could you maybe elaborate a little bit how much they're contributing bottom line or where the big benefit is. And in connection to that, you're exiting Spain business with CHF 13 billion in assets. What was making this not worth keeping the profitability insufficient? Or is it regulatory risks that are looming or kind of why have you decided to get rid of that one?

Just quickly to address the point on the profitability of Shaw and Partners in the first half of the year, we were talking about single-digit net bottom line contribution, I think it's around should be CHF 5 million or around CHF 5 million for CHF 5 million net. For you to remind you that for the majority of the time, we were holding 60% of the company. So this is not 100% of the profits generated by the company. So this is the contribution overall of Shaw and Partners to the bottom line. Now just on the technical part of it, and I know it's more of the -- your question is more about strategy. The consolidation of Shaw and Partners is done in a different way than our other businesses because of the type of the business, we need to net off commissions paid to the producers from the revenue. So it's a net revenue. It doesn't go into the cost side as we usually have it for all our other businesses. And this is the reason why including Shaw and Partners has a substantial impact to our revenue margin. So it is completely technical. The business is generating on a gross basis, 60, 70 basis points of revenues. Clearly, when you take out the payment to the producers, you end up with 30, 35 basis points of net revenue contribution. So a lot has to do with the accounting and not with the actual business fundamentals of the company. And again, clearly, it's a very different type of business than offshore private banking and the actual assets per CRO or financial adviser that we have in Australia are much higher in the normal typical private banking that we do compared to the business that we have in Australia. So we try to exclude these figures because they make comparisons a lot more difficult. So that's the reason why I exclude them when we publish some of the figures that we publish for our financial metrics.

In terms of the strategy, I think that Australia has been, for us, a very good acquisition. It has been a market that has been growing. So in terms of growth, actually, they are ahead in all metrics of the initial business plan that we had when we acquired them 2 years ago. I think that it is also a market that is from an institutional standpoint, is extremely attractive. So this is 1 on these institutional markets where our institutional asset management is targeting. In terms of the synergies that we can achieve you're right, you're saying that this is a domestic market, but a lot of the clients, they are also operating in international centers, and they want to benefit from a more international and diversified services, including exposure to international portfolios. So we have a lot of clients from Shaw and Partners in our other centers and also delivering the lending that we discussed about. So frankly, Shaw and Partners for us is not international private banking, but is 1 of our strategic areas in the onshore. Spain is a different -- and as you have seen, we have increased our stake to 75%. In Spain, the situation was different. It was a market where we had a minority stake, and it was a market that at different from a domestic standpoint, different dynamics. And finally, after many years of partnership, we have decided to part ways. Obviously, we are still very close to our former partners. We will try also on the institutional side to maintain a strict collaboration. But in terms of private banking, the dynamics were different, both in terms of cost income, profitability, et cetera.

[Operator Instructions] We have a follow-up from Mr. Herman with Citigroup.

I just thought I take opportunity since you're talking about Shaw and Partners. If you could just talk about -- it's good to hear that is people performing above the business plan. What has been the ROI on that investment thus far?

ROI. Yes. I couldn't tell you Nicholas, I don't have that information. We can take it offline, if you wish. Let me just to set a see, when we acquire -- we have a hurdle of the investment having at least a 10% return on investment after 3 years of operation. So after you go through integration and you get synergies, if you get synergies. So the target is a 10% return on investment in the third year of the acquisition. That was met when we made the assessment for the acquisition. And as Giorgio said, it's performing better than that. So it is higher than 10%.

That was the last question.

Okay. Thank you. Then, thank you very much for attending the presentation today. And obviously, I hand over to Giorgio for some final remarks. Thank you.

I just wanted to summarize this discussion. And from our perspective, we had a strong set of results. And the few points that I would like to emphasize is that we accelerated the growth. We had a step change in profitability. We are improving the quality of our business across the board, and we are on track to deliver targets while improving our capital generation. So overall, we find that this is a very solid foundation for the next phase of our growth. Thank you.