Good morning. This is the conference operator. Welcome, thank you for joining Credit Suisse Group's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results Media Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants who have dialed in are in listen-only mode and the conference is recorded. Time permitting, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions after the presentation. If you wish to register for a question, please press star and one at any time during the conference call. Should anyone need assistance, please press star and zero. I will now turn the conference over to Cindy Leggett-Flynn, Group Head Corporate Communications. Please go ahead, Cindy. Thank you operator, and thank you everyone for joining us today. Before we begin, let me remind you of the important cautionary statements at the beginning of the analyst update deck shown earlier today, including in relation to forward-looking statements, non-GAAP financial measures and Basel III disclosures. For a detailed discussion of our results, I refer you to the Credit Suisse Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Release published this morning. Let me remind you that our 2022 annual report and audited financial statements for the year will be published on or around March 9, 2023. On the line with me today are Ulrich Körner, our Group CEO, and Dixit Joshi, our Group CFO. Uli will make some opening remarks, after which we will take your questions. I will now hand over to Ulrich. Thank you, Cindy. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for joining today. We greatly appreciate your participation and engagement. I know that most of you were on the analyst call this morning. Let me briefly summarize the key points from my perspective. 2022 was an extremely challenging year for Credit Suisse, with the group posting a net loss of CHF 7.3 billion. Importantly, it was also the year which marked the beginning of the important and necessary transformation of our organization. On October 27th, we presented a targeted plan to create the New Credit Suisse, a simpler, more focused bank built around client needs. Today, we reconfirm all of the targets we announced in October. Our new executive board remains fully focused on the successful execution of our strategic transformation. The actions we have taken so far strengthen our business momentum in 2023 and beyond. Our teams continue to work relentlessly on serving our clients. Since October, we have proactively engaged with more than 10,000 wealth management clients and over 50,000 clients in the Swiss Bank. We are seeing the first positive signs from our comprehensive global initiatives to regain deposits as well as assets under management. In January, we saw deposit inflows at the group level in wealth management and APAC, as well as net new assets in Asia-Pacific and the Swiss Bank. Importantly, clients remain overwhelmingly supportive, and we remain very thankful for that. We have made significant progress in the transformation and restructuring of the investment bank. We already completed the first closing of our transaction with Apollo. That, along with other actions taken, contributed to an overall reduction in Securitized Products assets by around $35 billion since the end of the third quarter. This is approximately 2/3 of our targeted reduction of $55 billion. In Q4, we reduced risk-weighted assets and leverage exposure by about $5 billion and around $15 billion respectively, reflecting proactive deleveraging and de-risking measures in the Non-Core Unit. That's ahead of the target run rate we set in October. Our goal is to carve out CS First Boston as a distinct leading independent capital markets and advisory-led business, and we are pleased to announce the acquisition of the investment banking business of M. Klein & Company. This is a significant step forward in realizing CS First Boston's growth potential and creating value for our shareholders. Let me outline the strategic rationale and the importance of the acquisition of M. Klein & Company. The acquisition strengthens Credit Suisse advisory capabilities and accelerates the creation of an advisory-led CS First Boston. At the same time, it adds significant revenue opportunities for Credit Suisse. The transaction is at a single-digit price to earnings multiple and is expected to be earnings accretive, with an anticipated impact on the CET1 ratio of less than 10 basis points. Since our strategy announcement in October, we have strengthened our capital position by raising around CHF 4 billion of equity. We have also completed around CHF 10 billion of debt issuances whilst making tangible progress in deleveraging and de-risking the group further. This should reduce our funding needs in the future. Our cost transformation is well underway. As previously disclosed, actions initiated in the fourth quarter represent approximately 80% of our 2023 cost base reduction target of about CHF 1.2 billion. We are on track to achieve our 2025 target of CHF 2.5 billion. I want to make it absolutely clear that me and my management team are relentless in driving our cost base lower. To sum up, we are well advanced on our journey to create new Credit Suisse, a simpler, more focused Credit Suisse built around client needs. We have a new executive board with relevant experience and a strong track record of execution in similar situations. We are building a unified culture from the top of the organization with a strong focus on risk management, collaboration, and accountability. We have acted decisively to address the impact of the outflows experienced in the fourth quarter. We have seen progress in terms of positive deposit and asset inflows in most areas of the bank in January 2023. We are also making progress with the carve-out of CS First Boston and are creating a more focused markets businesses that will deliver innovative solutions and products for our wealth management and for our institutional clients. As mentioned, we reconfirm all the targets we announced in October. In short, we are determined to make this transformation a success, restore trust with all stakeholders, and ultimately create sustainable value for our shareholders. With that, I hand it over back to Cindy. Thanks, Ulrich. We'll now turn to the Q&A part of this conference. Operator, can we go ahead and open the line? Anyone who wants to ask a question may press star and one. If you change your mind and wish to remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from the line of Holger Alich with Handelszeitung. Please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you very much. A long morning. I restrict myself to three questions, if I may. The first one I asked this morning, the answer didn't satisfy me. Mr. Körner, you said you have an investor who's ready to put $500 million into Credit Suisse First Boston. This morning, I didn't see anything on that, and in the press release, there isn't a mention on that investor. What happened to this investor? Is that this investor tiered back? First question. Secondly, in the presentation, in the earnings release, you are referring to the future relations between Credit Suisse First Boston and the Credit Suisse. It's on slide number nine, and there's set in this timeline, CS First Boston as independent business, why we training strong relationship with Credit Suisse. Could you detail a little bit more concretely what will be once after the IPO of the CSFB will be this relation? Will Credit Suisse fund the whole entity, or what will it looks like? Some color on that would be very interesting to have. Thirdly, wealth management. You said you're turning around the corner, money is slightly coming back, which is encouraging, but of course, the basis is much lower than last year. I think what analysts ask that, too, if, are you in need of a new cost-cutting round in wealth management to adapt the machinery to the smaller wealth limit operation, or what is there you're thinking? That's it. Thank you. Thank you veru much. All very good questions, if I may say so. With respect to the investor mentioned end of October in CSFB, look, you need to think about like a journey, you know, getting CSFB on its own feet. By the way, this investor is still very interested, and there are several more where we are in very close contact as we speak. But we thought, you know, we do it step by step, so first step was, you know, to bring in M. Klein & Company and close that deal, which we did as announced today Now we take it from there and see, you know, how many, because there is clear interest, how many investors can and would we like to let in at, you know, which amounts and so on. This is something where we need a bit more time now, but we will execute on that going forward. Nothing has changed in terms of the direction of travel here. In terms of long-term partnership between New Credit Suisse and CSFB, that's a pretty simple thing in my eyes. Think about the journey of CSFB like whatever it is at the end of the day. We will see a two years-plus journey to get CSFB on its own feet. As you were alluding to, you know, doing the IPO. What we try to say here, I think that is, that is important to understand for, you know, all our colleagues working in Credit Suisse today and in future New Credit Suisse was also CSFB. This, this isn't. This is one firm. These are, you know, colleagues which work together depending on how long they are here for decades. The ties between New Credit Suisse and CSFB are obviously, for all these reasons, super deep and will stay super deep. That's what we try to say. If you look at, you know, our offering, for example, look into Asia, with our super strong ultra high net worth client relationships, you need very, very strong investment banking capabilities to serve them at the best as we do it today. That's why I'm saying and therefore this will always be a very, very strong partnership independently of, you know, the ownership of New Credit Suisse into CSFB. That is anyway majority as we speak and also after IPO. In my eyes, that can go into minority, that can go even to zero. Independently of that, the remarks around the partnership are absolutely valid. Coming back to the wealth management question, I think a lot of that was discussed in the earlier call. Again, the cost-based question in particular, which you had, is the cost actions we are taking in wealth management are part of the overall group cost transformation program. We, you know, have headcount reduction in wealth management in the fourth quarter 2022 by already 6%. This is all in line with the overall plan. As I said earlier as well, the plan is clearly to further lower the cost base in wealth management and therefore also make it so to speak more productive again. We do not look at what has happened in last fall only. Obviously, that is something which we, you know, as everyone who behaves a little bit entrepreneurial would deal with, but it's not the only driver going forward at all. The driver going forward is our very, very strong wealth management, which we like to build, to grow. Obviously, the assets we lost, we like, definitely, as I said this morning as well, regain. I think that's what we are doing here, and very forcefully. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Owen Walker with Financial Times. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks very much for your time this morning. Just on the flows, I know you've talked quite a lot about this already today, but I was just looking for clarification, a couple of points. One is, you've mentioned there's been a kind of return to flows in certain areas of the group. Can you, can you be specific about whether we're seeing net new assets at a group level or outflows at a group level in January? Can you talk about, I know you were asked earlier in the analyst call about the client outreach program, but I was wondering if you could talk about specific measures that taking, you know, other than the, you know, the communication with those clients, what sort of deals you're offering to bring people back on board? You've also mentioned that the clients aren't closing accounts. Do you have any numbers in terms of how many have closed accounts and where those closures have been? Sure, thanks for the questions. As you would immediately expect, we do not give, you know, net new asset figure for single months like January. I think the direction of travel, hopefully, and where we are, after last year came through, hopefully very clearly. I would say again, we said also as a guidance, we said also the group, wealth management globally, Asia Pac, what have you, is positive on deposits. We did that consciously because as we both know, you know, deposits is probably, you know, the assets, so to say, which work first, but which also have the opportunity to come back first. That's why we gave that guidance. This is back to the client outreach program, as I said, unprecedented, at least from what I have seen and heard here out of Credit Suisse. The most important thing was, Owen, you are fully aware of it, I know that we were not in a situation in October to really talk specifically about what we are doing, where we are also in terms of strengths when it comes to the capital base and so on. You also know very, very well that, you know, the information which triggered this event, so to say, were completely incorrect information. That was the very difficult situation in October. We used the time that we did other things to ramp up that outreach program, which we immediately started at October 27th. What we did in these outreaches, obviously everyone, so to speak, my front end colleagues, was participating, including the whole management, including myself, every day. What we did is, on the one hand explaining, you know, what is right and what is wrong, where are we, what are we doing, what is the strategy going forward, and why does that lead into a much more stable. Much more focused and much more profitable New Credit Suisse. That is the one thing. Obviously, if you have the chance to get time with all these, again, on the investment side, more than 10,000 clients, you use the time. If you have explained what should be explained, you have time to discuss business going forward and so on. That's, I think, what we all did during that phase. Help me with the third question. What was the third question? The third question was on, oh, yeah, in terms of numbers of clients who have actually closed their accounts and where those might have been. That's why I said, you know, the 98% of our clients remain with us. I think so there's really. That's I would say very strong message if you think it through because you have a very normal attrition and what we are seeing here is, I don't know, either very normal attrition or even below normal attrition. That's a very strong signal to the organization and to Credit Suisse, and it's very supportive for all of us and for Credit Suisse, I think. Okay, thanks very much. The next question comes from the line of Jakob Blume with Handelsblatt. Please go ahead. Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for taking my question. I would also try and get a more glimpse about the client outreach program. Is there any number that you can say that you are willing to sacrifice in wealth management PBT to regain deposits and assets under management? I have a second question on headcount reduction. I don't know. I have in mind that you wanted to reduce 2,700 employees by the end of Q4, and I'm just counting like 1,200. I don't know if I'm correct with these numbers, but if not, correct me if I'm wrong, or are you behind on sort of headcount reduction, or is there also intermediate hiring? Thanks. These are my questions. Okay. Jakob, thanks. Let me take the first question first. To say, it's hard to say. I mean, everyone wants to know that, including myself, if I may say so. How fast is the money coming back? Based on all the discussions I had, and I'm not sure if all of my colleagues would subscribe to that, but this is my experience from the last two or three months, basically. I would say there are principally three groups of clients. The first group, pretty small one, which came back with assets and so on, very quickly. After, you know, the last earnings announcement, strategy update, first one came back because they say, "Look, that makes tons of sense, and we believe in that, in that transformation and so on." Pretty small one, I would say. There's a second group, which I personally, I believe in, is a very large one, which said, "Look, let me look a little bit more. Let you go through capital raise," which we did, as you know. "And then I'm coming back, step by step." I think that is what we are seeing now next to all the efforts which we have taken. There might be a third group, which says, "Look, let me look a little bit longer in terms of how you execute. Are you really doing this time what you said?" Which is, by the way, very fair, I'm not nervous at all about that. In this sense, that makes it a bit hard to say, you know, how fast will the money come back. Having said that, if I talk to my wealth management colleagues, they are totally convinced that we bring back all the money lost. Obviously, you know, that and then the other things which we are doing will lead back wealth management into a very profitable growth path. Dixit, do you want to say the second one? Yes, Jakob. I'll just comment on the headcount. To answer your question, we're, you know, we're on track or ahead of pace. We moved really quickly, as you know, post-October 27th to execute on our headcount cuts. The net reduction in employees in the fourth quarter is around 4%. What you can see is, you know, we're well on track and ahead of meeting those targets. The next question comes from the line of Nathalie Olof-Ors with AFP. Please go ahead. Hi. I would like to talk about bonuses. You said you're gonna cut the pool of money for the bonus by 50%. If you could give us an indication of how this will apply to different levels of employees, and including to the senior management, why you took that decision. If you're not scared that your employees have been through quite a lot over the past two years. I mean, isn't that going to discourage them and you understand that it could interfere with your efforts to try to improve the business at Credit Suisse? Okay, Nathalie, thank you very much for the question. Good question. As you said, we cut the bonus by 50%. You would expect that, with a performance like last year, we spent quite some time exactly on your question in preparation of that bonus round, and looking particular at the different levels of the organization as you were alluding to. In general, you can say the hit and you know, everyone in the organization qualifies, so to say, for variable compensation or bonus. The hit senior management takes in that round is on average much more significant than other layers in the organization. I think that's the right way to look at it, in terms of who can influence what. On the other hand, we wanted to make sure even in difficult years like that we can keep, you know, all our good colleagues, traveling with us, into New Credit Suisse. With respect to the Group Executive Board, the Group Executive Board will not receive any variable compensation for 2022. How will you compensate that for after? Because you are also doing a quite serious job. I think you must spend quite a lot of time working on getting Credit Suisse back on its feet. How would you get compensated over time if you are not getting any bonus this year? That's a good question, Nathalie. Good question for our board. Just let me say, I can only talk about myself. I mean, if you produce such a loss, I would not expect any bonus at all, just to be clear. I must say, and this is something maybe for you to reflect, I must say, you know, eight of 11 colleagues on the executive board are new since the beginning of 2022. Mm-hmm. The point I'm trying to make is they do nothing else, and believe me, this is rather seven days than six days a week. They do nothing else than, you know, getting this transformation done and getting Credit Suisse back where it should belong. Therefore, this is very tough for them, and I'm tremendously grateful to them for what they all do for the organization. We had this discussion at length within the team, and the whole team feels completely convinced that this is the right decision for the team. All right. Perfect. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Steve Slater with IFR. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. I had a follow-up to the first question, actually. In October, you said it was a hard commitment of $500 million investment in CS First Boston. Can I clarify, that has gone and is no longer there? Related to that, the reports are that you are seeking $500 million for CS First Boston in a five-year exchangeable debt security. Is that the plan? Is that the sort of level of investment you're looking for? Can you give some guidance on when you are thinking about an IPO? Is 2024 the right time to be thinking about that? Thank you. Thank you very much. I mean, a hard commitment is, for me, a commitment, you know, if somebody really commits to do that, and that was the case, it's still the case. That's why I said it's still part of the round we are in with several others highly interested investors. In terms of amount, and that's exactly what I said before, you know, we wanted to conclude the acquisition of M. Klein & Company, which we did. We will now figure out, you know, what is in total. Because for obvious reasons important, what is in total the amount of third-party capital, which we would like to see in such a round. This is work which we finalize now and over the next, whatever, couple of weeks and months. In terms of the journey, it's a little bit based on my practical experience, so to say. It takes us certainly through 2023 to prepare as much as we can. It takes us through 2024 to hopefully get all necessary regulatory approvals and so on. I would say, and maybe I'm wrong here, just to be clear, but I would say probably end of 2024, 2025 is the earliest point I would see for an IPO of CS First Boston. Obviously, there's also next to all other factors which I just was alluding to, depends on the market situation and so on. I think that's probably the way to think about it. Thanks. The next question comes from a line of Daniel Zulauf with CH Media. Please go ahead. Good morning. I have a few questions, two, I think. The first is, I mean, the operation you're in seems-I guess all of us, highly complicated. I would like to invite you to tell us a little bit, you referred to some experience you made in the past in similar situation as you mentioned it. I would like to invite you to tell us a little bit more about the complexity of the operation you're in. On the one hand, you have clients you need to calm down and you have collaborators who you need to try to convince to stay with the company. You have a number of businesses eroding rapidly due to your new risk measures. You have the capital situation, et cetera. You have to obviously the liquidity situation. Maybe you can tell us a little bit, give us a short spot from inside how this complexity you're dealing at the moment with how that feels like? The second question is about the money flows. I was asking UBS a few days ago how these money outflows from Credit Suisse, especially in Asia, potentially would affect UBS? They said, they were not actually coming over to them, this money that, because that was an interesting argument, is that they said they were following another risk approach. Clients in Asia, especially high net worth clients, the ones you are dealing with as well, are following high-risk strategies, many of them and banks like Credit Suisse were more as eager to deal with the such clients and etcetera. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit on these outflows from this perspective. I mean, you are certainly less risk-prone now, and then therefore, certain clients and certain businesses can no longer be offered. Maybe this is one of the reasons for the money outflows. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit on this, second point as well. Thank you. Daniel, thank you for the question. This is Dixit Joshi, and I'm glad you brought that up. You know, the complexity of the firm, as well as the performance that we've had, you know, in the last few years is really the reason why we needed to take radical action regarding the firm's perimeter. You know, we've tackled a number of things there, is one, you know, get the balance sheet smaller. We're de-risking the firm, as you're seeing through either the First Boston carve-out that we're working on, or it's the Apollo transaction that we announced this morning as well, the first close of that transaction where we've been de-risking significant amount of assets out of that perimeter in the United States. All of the actions that we've been taking are quite deliberate around reducing the complexity of the firm, bringing more efficiency to the balance sheet, reducing the cost base and bringing the cost base more in line with revenues, and doing so in a fastest manner as we can, but being economically responsible for our shareholders. I hope you're seeing that through all of the collective actions that we've been taking in the fourth quarter. The benefits of doing all that, as you see, is to the second part of your first question, you know, around capital and liquidity. As we reduce complexity, as we reduce risk, as we reposition the company around the New Credit Suisse and around clients, what that does do is have benefits in terms of liquidity, in funding, and in capital. You've seen the capital benefits come through. You know, we announced on the Apollo first close that we've transacted on yesterday, an approximately 30 basis points CET1 uplift, and that's over and above the 14.1% that we ended the year at. Of course, the 30 basis points would be in the first quarter of this year. You see in our funding plan a further positive as a result of all of these actions that we've been taking since October. We've been able to reduce the funding plan and hence on a go-forward basis that will improve our funding costs. For the first time in the last three years, we now will issue less bonds than we will redeem. You know, that's a good virtuous change, and all as a result of, you know, what you've mentioned, which is reducing the complexity of the firm. Yeah. Let me take the second one, as much as I can. To say, Mr. Zulauf, the, I don't know what UBS told you, obviously, but in principle, you know, we are, call it, frantic competitors. From my observation, both sides behave always very professionally in the market, goes without saying. With respect to your Asian point and risk profile and so on, look, I would say, I can Whatever you heard, I wouldn't understand that, point one. Point two, as you know or might know, we are very, very deeply rooted in Asia, and that has to do with, you know, not only from the ultra high network wealth management s ide, but also in particular, in combination with, you know, the necessary investment banking capabilities. What I mean is that that's a fundamental difference between Asia and other parts of the world. In Asia, it's extremely important. You know, you have these huge families really who own large companies themselves as a family, and they need exactly an offering which we build out there for many years and decades between wealth management and the advisory part of the investment banking and capital market side. I think what we have built, the colleagues before me, obviously, what we have built there is probably a combination of offering which is hard to copy for many, if not most of the competitors. Operator, I think we just have time for one more question. Sure. The next question comes from the line of Christian Kolbe with Blick. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I've two. First question, you said Ulrich Körner, that Credit Suisse will be profitable in 2024 again. I am a little bit wondering regarding the geopolitical risks out there and then the transformation risks inside Credit Suisse, how will you manage that? The second question is, it was said that you were paying, like, better interest rates, better conditions for clients to come back. Is this reasonable because this will lead to new costs before you get the money back? Thank you very much. Both good questions. Let me start with the second first. At least if I remember correctly, I didn't know that I didn't say we paid better higher prices, better interest rates, as far as I remember. Not a few, but it was heard. Yeah. I said we are paying competitive prices and competitive conditions in the market, and that is what we are doing. I said explicitly because that's important point, and I'm thankful for your question. I made a point very explicitly in saying, look, we are not, you know, buying assets back, so to speak. I mean, that would not be sustainable. That would not be the right way to do it, and that's not. We try to be competitive, but no more. With respect to profitability, I said 2024, we should be profitable. As you say, that's what our plan says. That is, you know, what we are executing with our transformation plan this year, last year, and going into 2024. Yes, you are right. I mean, there are always things in life which nobody knows, what happens in the world overall. I think we have done a prudent and also hopefully somewhat careful planning, that indicates me to say we should get profitable in 2024. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. We'll have to leave it there. Thank you all for joining us today. If you have any follow-up questions, please do, as always, contact the media relations team in the usual manner. Operator? That concludes today's media conference call. A recording of the presentation will be available about two hours after the event on the Credit Suisse website. Thank you for joining today's call. You may all disconnect.