Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the full year 2021 results conference call and live webcast. I am Alice, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Jens Brueckner, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome from us in Zurich for the presentation of our full year 2021 results. Today I'm joined by Giorgio Pradelli, CEO of EFG International, and Dimitris Politis, CFO and Deputy CEO of EFG International. It's our pleasure to present our latest set of results to you. As usual, we will have presentations, which will be followed by a Q&A, and I also point out that the disclaimer in the slides is being assumed as read. With that, I hand over to Giorgio. Thank you. Thank you, Jens, and good morning. Also from my side, a warm welcome here at the Metropolitan. I know that most of you are actually via webcasting or the phone, and I really wish that by next time, we will be able again to have a presentation in person here in Zurich. I would like to say before we start that actually the presentation follows the usual sequence. I will start with the highlights, the key highlights of the year of 2021. Dimitris will follow suit with a detailed presentation of the financial performance, and I will close with the outlook, and the strategic priorities for 2022 and beyond. Let us start with the key highlights. I'm on page four, of the presentation, and clearly 2021 was a very important year for us. I would say it was a great year, and we had a step change in terms of performance and profitability. I would like to mention upfront the three key messages that we'd like you to take home. First of all, we had a very strong growth momentum in 2021 that has been driven by our clients and a demand for advice and content. Second, we managed to reach a new level of profitability. Third, this has been possible thanks to our consistent execution of our strategy and a continued transformation for the better of our bank. Let me elaborate these three concepts in the following pages. I'm on page five. Again, the title is for us extremely important. Continued strong growth momentum and consistent execution. This is what we try to do day in, day out. We want to maintain, and possibly accelerate our growth momentum, and obviously, we want to continue to execute our strategy in a very consistent way. As you can see, in terms of growth, we achieved CHF 8.8 billion of NNA, of net new assets. This is 5.5% growth. This is at the upper end of our range. As you know, our range is between 4% and 6%, and this is the highest NNA inflow in more than a decade. Clearly, in terms of assets under management, we were able also to grow 8.3% to an all-time high of CHF 172 billion, and this is already net of the assets that actually we have closed, of the businesses that we have closed or sold. Clearly, for us, this is a testament that our CRO model, our business model, based on client relationship officers, is competitive, and it is appreciated by clients. We continue, we have continued, and we will continue to hire in a strategic way, CRO and CRO teams. This growth has been translated into a sharp increase in profitability, and we are extremely pleased about that. You recall that three years ago, we launched our new strategy based on profitable and sustainable growth. Now this growth is translating in profitability. The IFRS net profit has reached CHF 206 million. This is an increase of 78% year-on-year. This has been possible because we have been focusing on generating a significant operating leverage. We have been able to grow revenues, and we were able to grow revenues 3x the growth in terms of operating expenses. As Dimitris will elaborate later, in reality, we continue to achieve efficiency gains in our current operations while we invest in the transformation of the business. Clearly, such a growth and such a good profitability have resulted in a stronger capital, and liquidity position, and we are pleased to be able to propose an increase in dividend of 20% to CHF 0.36. I move now to the next page, and clearly we are extremely pleased with the achievement of the targets and the financial results, but we are equally pleased with the constant transformation that we have been able to do in the last years, and in particular, in 2021. We have been investing relentlessly, I would say, in content, in improving and optimizing our global reach, and in what we call simplicity. Now, I always said that our CRO model, our client relationship officers, are second to none in delivering service, superior service to our clients, and this is extremely appreciated by our clients. Obviously this has to be coupled with content, and we have been investing over the last few years, but you have seen this in 2021 in a very strong way. We have been investing, I would say, in investment-led solutions and in content. We have a focus on our framework that we call Future Leaders, and obviously our sustainable offering. Clearly, investment in content requires investment in people and talent, both in terms of client relationship officers, but also talent in the support and control functions. Clearly we continue to invest in improving our brand awareness and positioning. Regarding simplicity here, this is an overarching concept. It has to do with optimizing our footprint, our geographical footprint. Clearly, for us, client proximity is extremely important, so we will continue to have a global reach, but we want to do it in a way that is cost effective, is more agile, and more scalable with a lower cost base. Obviously simplicity has to do with the digital transformation, and I'll come back at the end with it. At the end of the day, we want to further accelerate our capital light business model that is geared towards sustainable growth, and generating excess capital for our shareholders. In a nutshell, and before handing over to Dimitris, I would like to emphasize again, we had a very strong growth coupled with a new level of profitability during a constant transformation of our business. With this, I'd like to ask Dimitris to join me on the podium. As you heard, Dimitris, besides his responsibilities as Chief Financial Officer, has been appointed as Deputy Chief Executive. Please join me all in congratulating Dimitris for this important appointment. Dimitris- Thank you. The floor is yours. Thank you very much, and thank you all for joining the presentation of EFG's 2021 financial results this morning. I think that Giorgio has mentioned all the key things. I think that I will use a few more numbers to describe two very significant milestones that we have achieved in 2021. To put it in perspective, in terms of the growth, with CHF 8.8 billion of net new assets, it has been the best performance in business flows in the decade. Puts us in a new level of production in terms of our business objectives. The second one, and I think we should not be timid about it is the best bottom line we have achieved since the financial crisis at CHF 206 million of profit, and that profit is the best performance if one were to exclude a very large windfall gain that came from the merger between EFG and BSI in 2016. What does that really mean for us? Because clearly hitting very good numbers can make you a bit more complacent. I think it gives us the confidence that the delivery is there, that we are succeeding in delivering the strategic plan. I think more importantly, it sets a new bar for our performance. It is not the end of the journey, it is the middle of the journey. As Giorgio described, we have still many more things that we need to do, and we are improving on these. For us, it's a foundation for a more solid performance or even more solid performance going forward. On that note, I'll start going through the details of the results. I'll point you to page nine. In terms of business development, net new assets were at CHF 8.8 billion, a 5.5% growth rate for the year. AUA, AUM were up 8% at CHF 172 billion. This is mostly driven by the inflows and favorable market effects. As you know, we had some actions relating to our footprint project, which led to exiting some businesses, which clearly reduced our AUM. Approximately that figure is CHF 4 billion. We've also hired 72-74 new CROs, which have been either hired, signed, or approved. Net profit, CHF 206 million, 78% up. Underlying net profit, CHF 168 million, 47% up year-over-year. More importantly, operating leverage working clearly in our favor with revenues growing more than 6%, costs up 2.6%, which drives our growth in underlying profitability. We've managed to reduce our cost to income ratio to below 80% at 79.9%. This is almost a 3% decrease in cost to income compared to 2020. We have also concluded almost all the actions we had in our plan to optimize the global footprint. If these actions were to be taken into account in 2021, we would be looking at a cost-to-income ratio of 78.3%. At the same time, we have accelerated another set of actions, which is more about simplifying the bank, enhancing the operating model, enhancing delivery to the client, and we expect all these actions to deliver results both in 2022 and beyond 2022. 2021 has also been a year where de-risking has been a very important element of our strategy. We've managed to resolve one of the legal cases we had in the life insurance space. We've also managed to progress in our legal dispute, in a legacy court case with court cases going in our favor, at the end of 2020 and during 2021, and I'll come back to those, a bit later. Finally, in terms of capital position, it is very strong at 16.3% Core Tier 1, almost 22% total capital ratio. We have a fantastic generation of capital, which allows us to support our business. It is a capital light model in terms of the business, in terms of capital requirements. We've also placed $400 million of Tier 1 notes in the market in January, and we have already bought back about CHF 200 million of our Tier 2 earlier on in the year, and we will be redeeming the remaining amount in April of this year. As Giorgio mentioned, the proposal is for a 20% increase in the dividend going from CHF 0.30 to CHF 0.36 for the year to be approved by the general meeting in April. I will skip the next two pages. These are all the numbers that one could possibly want, I think, for EFG. I'll go to page 12. I think page 12 passes this message of consistent delivery. If you look at the business growth, we started with a 4% growth in 2019, which was the first year of the strategic plan. The next two years, we've been at 5.5%, clearly at the higher end of our 4%-6% range, and the pipeline is strong, so we expect to continue growing solidly in 2022. In terms of the cost to income, we started in 2019 with a figure which was over 85%. We brought it down by 2.5% between 2019 to 2020. May I remind you that 2020 on the revenue side was not an easy year, which required a lot of cost management. In 2021, we've reduced it by another 2.8% to 79.9%, which was again the operating leverage effect that we had during the year. Clearly, this led to very significant increases of profitability, 47% up on the underlying or 78% up on the reported basis at CHF 206 million for 2021. On page 13, you have a depiction of how the operating leverage worked this year. Revenues were up 6.3%. This is despite NII going against us. We had a decline in NII, but clearly the commission side of the business really supported this growth. Commission income was up 15%. This is a testament to a shift to higher quality recurring revenues. I'll come back with more details on the quality of the revenue side. At the same time, growth in cost was controlled. You'll see that if you compare 2020 to 2021, the picture is completely different. In 2020, we had to do significant cost reduction, cost management, and hold things back because revenues were not coming our way. Clearly, as the bank expands, we need to invest. I'll also describe a bit later our philosophy of how we approach cost management at EFG. Page 14 describes the non-underlying items and, you know, historically, this has been a page where we've tried just to explain the difference between underlying and non-underlying. For me, the message for 2021 is more the de-risking. Clearly, de-risking came with a substantial profit in the life insurance. For us, what is important is that in 2021, we managed to settle the Transamerica dispute. Transamerica accounted for about 40%-50% of the risk we have in the legal cases in the life insurance space. Hopefully, we will manage to also resolve the other cases as soon as practically possible. We also made positive inroads in the legal case we have in Taiwan. We had a positive verdict in Hong Kong back in 2020, at the end of 2020, and we have positive developments in Singapore, notably in November 2021. This allowed us to offset the collateral we had. At this point, we do not have a loan any longer on our books, and because of that action, we also moved the provision that we had under the expected credit loss line to a general legal provision without any substantial P&L effect from that move from one line to the other. I think that overall, despite getting very good news in Singapore, we have been conservative, and we will revisit that provision as the case continues within 2022. Moving to the business flows on page 15. As we said, CHF 8.8 billion, 5.5% growth. Clearly, we had a positive effect from markets. Currencies were flat throughout the year. I know that some of the people following the bank closely were expecting that the currencies would go our way. Actually, we had a very positive effect in the first half. If you remember, we had an equally negative effect in the second half of the year from currencies, which led to that result being practically zero. We've also exited some businesses which are included in the other category of CHF -4.3, most notably the personal and corporate business we had in Ticino, plus the business we had in Paris under the brand name of Oudart. In terms of the growth, on the right-hand side, you'll see that it is diversified. It's coming from existing CROs, from new CROs, and in this case, new CROs are all the CROs who have been hired starting January 1, 2019. From business initiatives, which are the new offices or the new acquisitions we've made in Australia or the new office of Dubai or in Portugal. I think what gives us a lot of comfort by looking at this distribution is that the new CROs and the new business initiatives have been contributing solidly. All of them roughly CHF 2 billion every year, both for new CROs and for new business initiatives, pretty much every year. Also, we've seen a pickup in the performance of existing CROs. It comes with performance management of these CROs and also through the provision of better content throughout the year. Through that, we're actually getting higher share of wallet of our clients by being more focused on both process and content. In terms of CRO efficiency, I'm looking now at page 16, you see that the number of CROs has gone down. We have been hiring within our range that we have guided back in 2019. This reduction comes with better performance and better performance management. I know that the title of the page is about CRO efficiency, but perhaps next time round, we might call it CRO performance, because what you see at the bottom right of the page is exactly that. You see, over the last three years, we have increased the ability of our CROs to perform by more than 40% by increasing the AUMs that each one of our CROs is managing. This is very important across all regions. In the end of the day, by being efficient in the Performing in the front line, that allows us to be efficient overall throughout the bank. Page 17 gives you a picture of where the growth came. As you see, it's very diversified between the regions. We had a very strong performance from Switzerland and Italy, adding CHF 2.7 billion. This is very encouraging because at the same time, Switzerland and Italy has the highest return on AUM compared to all the other regions, so it helps definitely maintaining the margin. Latin America made a very strong comeback in the second half. It actually posted the highest growth between the private banking markets at 8.2%. U.K., at about 8%, has been very consistent. If I look back, I probably need to go back seven, eight, 10 years to find a figure in the U.K. where they are below 5% annual growth. In terms of contribution, have been very consistent. EFGAM funds at +CHF 2 billion has had its best contribution in terms of business growth for as long as I can remember in terms of performance. The only area where you see a negative is Asia Pacific, where the negative effect comes from deleveraging. As you see on the picture on the right, if one were to exclude the loans and just have the net new assets excluding loans, that performance is a positive one. Page 18 is about content. Page is about quality of content and about quantity of content, and I think that we have improved in both areas during the last few years. I think in terms of quality, the fact that we're having an increasing penetration of mandates, we have reached 57%, from 54 last year, and we are on track to achieve the 60% that we have set as a target this year. I think that is a testament that our clients actually appreciate the advice we are providing, and they're willing to engage with us in an advisory or in a discretionary type of relationship when it comes to managing their assets. In terms of quality, I will also refer to the next page, which is the Morningstar ratings of our funds, where you see that we have reached 80% of our New Capital funds having four- or five-star ratings by Morningstar. I think in terms of quantity, you'll see at the bottom of page 18, we've had several products that have been launched this year. Some of them are mid, some of them are long, thematic products. We have been focusing on ESG, on disruptive trends on private markets, and we've also launched our first ESG dedicated discretionary mandate. Page 19 is a picture of our performance, in terms of Morningstar ratings and the number of funds that we are issuing under the brand name of New Capital. You'll see that quality has been going up, now 80% rated with four or five stars. That compares to about 50% three years ago, plus the number of funds has been increasing over time. Let's now go to page 20, where we have more details about the profit and loss. Revenues were up 6.3%. This is underlying operating income. You'll see that the driver is clearly commission income, which is up 15%. We've had NII going against us at -15% and some positive developments in the net other income. This marks the higher penetration of higher value products, which has been driving a more sustainable and more recurring income on the revenue side. You can also see that the bottom right of the page, where the commission from mandates of funds was up 24% year-on-year in 2021. I think the two other elements that I would like to note is that NII has been stable between the first half and the second half of the year, which gives us a lot of comfort, clearly, that any impact from lower interest rates has bottomed out. The second element is that if you compare our margin between the first half and the second half, they're practically the same. That has come through active repricing. We've seen the benefits of repricing in the second half. We shall see more benefits from repricing in 2022, but that clearly for us is a bottom in terms of our revenue margin for our aspirations in 2022 and beyond. On the cost side, we have had cost increasing by 2.6%, roughly the same increase between personnel expenses and G&A. This reflects investment in the business. We need to take advantage of our growth opportunities. We are investing in digital capabilities, we are investing in talent. But at the same time, we're taking actions which will help us manage these costs going forward. Let me just step back a bit to describe how we think about costs. This is part of how we actually manage our budget cycle. The first step is to figure out how much cost we can take out for the business before we invest in it. To give you an indication, that figure for 2021 was about CHF 50 million of costs. At the same time, we want to grow, we need to invest, we want to put more money. We're looking at opportunities where the marginal cost to income is definitely below 50% when it comes to new opportunities and when we invest. That helps us move the business forward. One of these actions in terms of managing the cost has been the footprint project. I'll describe it in even more detail on the next page, but all the footprint actions that we have in the plan were concluded, with the exception of closing the transaction in Spain. All the rest were concluded in 2021, and we expect the benefits to be visible in the P&L in 2022. Now, if these effects could have been visible fully in 2021, we would be having a cost to income ratio of 78.3%. For us, that is, let's call it the starting point for a new level of improved efficiency going forward. One final point to mention on the costs, which might be helpful, we took a substantial amount of provisions in 2021, order of magnitude CHF 30 million. The vast majority of these provisions are restructuring provisions, which have to do with streamlining our operating footprint and resources. Which means that starting 2022, we're coming in lighter than before, and we will take that advantage for us to improve our operating efficiency going forward. On page 22, we have the full scope of the footprint rationalization. It has been fairly extensive. What you see here is a reduction in eight business units or locations. In terms of perimeter for revenues, about CHF 90 million. In terms of perimeter and cost, about CHF 90 million. We're talking about 300 people, again, in the perimeter, and CHF 16 billion of AUM included in these actions. Out of those, you'll see that we have all the actions completed except for the last one. We have action in Chile, in the personal and corporate banking, in Houdan in France, in Luxembourg. We've transferred the business that we had in Guernsey to other locations and reduced one booking center by doing so. We are discontinuing our operations in Milan. We are merging Patrimony into EFG Bank. We are looking forward to closing the transaction that we have with our subsidiary, A&G in Spain, within the first half of 2022. Page 23 is a snapshot of the balance sheet as at the end of the year. The balance sheet has always been very solid, always very liquid. You'll see loan to deposit ratio at 50%, LCR at 188%. Again, we mentioned the life insurance exposures, which are being managed as a legacy position. We believe that there is embedded value in those positions, so over time, we expect to make a profit. As always, the problem with the life insurance portfolio is that it is volatile and cannot be controlled. Although we believe that the overall effect is gonna be a positive one over time, it is a matter of making sure that the timing of it is managed as best as possible. Page 24 shows the regulatory position. I'm not gonna spend too much time on it. You'll see that Core Tier 1 at 16.3 is very strong. Total capital, almost 22%. This follows the placement of $400 million of Tier 1 instruments. We also announced a few days ago that we will be redeeming the remaining Tier 2. It's about $200 million of Tier 2 that remains. On page 25, we show the evolution of capital under Swiss GAAP. You'll see that we had a strong gross underlying capital generation of 1.7, while risk-weighted assets were managed to be almost flat year-on-year. This allows us also to have a dividend of 36 happen for the year, which is an increase of 20%. As you see, we closed the year at a Core Tier 1 capital of 16.3%. Moving to page 26, which is the same picture, but now under IFRS. Why do we have this picture under IFRS? It's because that starting in 2022, EFG will switch its reporting of capital ratios to IFRS from Swiss GAAP. This is to align the metrics of financial reporting to the metrics of capital reporting, which is market practice. You'll see that in this case, the underlying P&L, the gross underlying P&L capital generation is even higher at 2.3%, and the actual capital ratio at year-end is very close to the Swiss GAAP capital ratio. We have a 15.8% capital ratio and a 21.5% total capital ratio. Now, we do expect two more actions coming in. One is the disposal of our stake in A&G in Spain. That will add 70 basis points to Core Tier 1. And the buyback, the redemption of our Tier 2 notes and the small part of the bond participation, all that on a adjusted basis, on a pro forma basis, would bring the IFRS capital ratios to 16.5% for Core Tier 1 and to 20.2% for total capital. I will close with sort of the standard page that we use to review our level of achievement on what we promised three years ago. You will see there's a lot of blue ticks in terms of what has happened. I think that, as I mentioned earlier on, we are. This is not the end of the journey. We still have many things to do, but there's been a significant level of achievement in the last three years. I think that we've done a great job in cost management. I'm not saying that there's not more to be done, but the track record is good. Just to give you an understanding, cost to income ratio went down 2.5 percentage points between 2019 and 2020, and another 2.8 percentage points to 2021. We do have a track record of actually moving definitely in the right direction when it comes to efficiency. In terms of capital management, I think the numbers speak for themselves. Capital ratios are very strong, and we are increasing dividend payout. In terms of the revenue generation, this is the area where the plan had to be adjusted. Clearly, when we were preparing the plan in 2019, we were not expecting COVID. We were not expecting interest rates to drop as they did. We had a challenging environment at the second half of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. We've managed that with very active repricing, and business development. The positive note here is that we now expect to actually have some tailwinds on the net interest income line. What you see on the right-hand side of the page is a very static simulation on our balance sheet of the effect of an expected set of hikes in the rates. On the assumption of four hikes on the dollar, two hikes on the euro, and four hikes on the pound, we believe that we will get, on a static basis, CHF 115 million of additional NII. Now we all know that reality is not static, so I don't expect that we will get the full CHF 115 million, but we will get a very large portion of that revenue in our book on the assumption of these hikes. I know that some people are more bullish on the hikes, especially on the dollar, if I look at the news, but we've used this simply as an indication of what would be the potential, revenue uplift. To put it into perspective, our underlying revenues in 2021 were CHF 1,185 million. We're talking here about something which is about 10% uplift in revenues if these things happen, as described in this static simulation. I think that on that note, I would like to close, and I'll pass the floor on to Giorgio for his closing remarks. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Dimitris, for the comprehensive analysis of the financial performance. In the next few minutes, I'd like to talk about the outlook and the strategic priorities for 2022 and beyond. Before we look forward, I'd like to start actually this section looking a second back of the trajectory that we have had in the last five, six years since the acquisition and integration of BSI in 2017. I think it is very important before we look forward to understand where we are coming from, to understand what we have achieved in the last few years, and to see the momentum that we have in executing our strategy. At the time, we were a bank with about CHF 80 billion AUM and Swiss francs, and in the last five years, we more than doubled that via a combination, obviously, of a very important acquisition in Switzerland and a good acquisition, a strong acquisition in Asia-Pacific, but also with a strong organic growth. In 2019, three years ago, we presented a new plan, which was based on profitable and sustainable growth. As I said earlier and Dimitris demonstrated in the comprehensive presentation, clearly we have been growing very fast over the last three years. 2020 was obviously an unprecedented year, but allowed us to test and demonstrate our operational and financial resilience. Clearly, this allowed us also to adapt our business model to the new trends. In 2021, as we discussed, we reached new level of profitabilities. For us, 2021 is an important year. As Dimitris said, it is a year of foundation. For us, actually, it is a starting point. We have cemented the foundation of our business, and we believe that from 2022 and beyond, we can really unlock the full potential of our bank. Page 30 is the same story, but shown in terms of figures. I went back five years. Dimitris presented the results over the last two, three years. As you can see, both in terms of net new assets and in terms of IFRS net profit, the starting point was negative. As you all know, to achieve a turnaround and to have the breakthrough is always the most complicated part. As a snowball, you need to get going before accelerating, and this is what we have been doing. Clearly, this has translated into a growth in terms of assets under management and improvement in the efficiency, as you can see on the bottom right, where operating expenses are going down and will continue to go down as a function of our actions. Now, outlook for 2022, I make reference here to a publication that every year our CIO team produces. You have a QR code, you can download it, and see the top 10 themes and trends that we are forecasting for a year ahead. I would say that clearly coming out of two years of pandemic, I think is an understatement to say that the business environment is actually quite complex and we are all shaping actually a new world where some trends are going back, so to speak, to normal, but other trends are actually accelerating to uncharted waters for the future, towards the future. In a nutshell, I believe that you know, we have supportive macro trends that I think are playing well for the world and for our business. I talk about digitalization, I talk about sustainability and green transition. The markets remain volatile. This is again another understatement, seeing what has happened in the last few weeks. As we speak, obviously, the geopolitical tensions are having a major impact on our business and on the markets. Now, the key point I'd like to make here is that, obviously the visibility is not great, to be fair. Another big debate that Dimitris alluded to is obviously about inflation and interest rates. The good news there for us is that it seems that the interest rate trend that was against us has bottomed out, and obviously, from now we should be able to gain if interest rates will increase, while our momentum in growth in net commission income will continue. The key message I really would like to convey looking about the outlook is that we believe and we are very confident that EFG has a very strong competitive model and competitive position, and we... Our business model is very lean and agile, and we can adapt to these complex situations and complex trends. Again, if you ask me, obviously I would prefer to have a bit more calmer waters, but if we need to go again and navigate these complex situations, I think we are very well positioned, and we have the right talent and infrastructure. Now, I'd like to spend one minute talking about. I'm on page 32, talking about sustainability, because among the macro trends, together with digitalization, I believe that this is what will shape our society and our future and our business environment, and this is clearly the most important, I would say, priority for the next generation. We believe that obviously sustainability is all about balancing economic, environmental, and social interests. Here are the expectations of the next generations that are clearly a priority. We as a bank, as a financial institution, have the ability, but also the responsibility to drive change. We can drive change in two ways. First, as you can see on the left-hand side, we have a fiduciary duty, and we have the ability to guide the allocation of our clients' assets to transformative technologies and companies that obviously will support this sustainable development and innovation and transition. I think this is extremely important. We believe very much on innovation and technologies that will allow the world to cope with this major challenge. Obviously, as a firm, we have also a major responsibility, first of all, to be an employer of choice and to serve the interest of the communities that we operate with, in, and obviously to help and protect the environment. For 2022, we have set ourselves certain targets. Clearly, regarding the first objective, about guiding the allocation of our clients' assets towards these technologies, we are continuing expanding our responsible investment offering. We continue to develop and deliver ESG initiatives. Obviously, for us, everything which is S and G is equally important as E, so everything related to the culture of diversity and equal opportunity, every initiative that we can do in the social space to support our communities is extremely important. Obviously, I believe that in this area, what is important, not only for ESG, but I would say for the financial sector, is to have more transparency and disclosure and stakeholder management. This, again, will be for us somehow as a North Star in guiding a lot of our strategic decision. Now, let us come to the heart of our strategic priorities. We believe that we are very well positioned for profitable and sustainable growth for 2022 and beyond, where we can unlock really our potential. We use as a framework these three pillars in terms of strategic priorities. We will continue to focus on clients, content, and simplicity. We have the freedom to put clients first, and clients are at the heart of everything we do. I believe that the growth, I mentioned it earlier, but I'd like to emphasize it again, the fact that we have been growing at this pace, besides the numbers that are very pleasing, again, for me, the most important element is that shows the trust that clients are putting with us. Obviously, we do something that they appreciate, and this relationship of trust, I always said that actually the relationship between the clients and the client relationship officers is the most precious asset that we have. Obviously, we will continue in this direction, delivering superior service and world-class investments. Now, we believe that obviously content is king. Content is extremely important to find the solutions that the clients need to navigate these complex times, these uncertain times is what they want. This is where we can add value. As I said, the visibility is not great, but for sure we can help and support our clients in navigating this difficult time. We will continue to invest in our investment and client solutions, and we will continue to invest in talent, and we will continue to invest in hiring CROs. Now, if we know how to attract new clients, how to serve existing clients, and we have been able to improve and deliver better content, now the key questions is: How can we deliver all this in a more simple, simplified way, in a faster way, in a more digital way to our clients? This is where simplicity comes in. At the end of the day, simplicity is about a reduction of complexity. I think, Dimitris's illustrated very well what we mean about that when we talk about footprint. The optimization that we have done has been extremely important. Digital transformation is about how to improve the client experience. How to be faster in delivering our content to our clients. It's about how to improve the internal efficiency, automating processes. It's about how to use data for everything we do and to drive the business forward and improve the quality of our business. Obviously, in this day and age, all of this is fundamental that obviously cybersecurity is strengthened because clearly safety first is always critical. Now, what is also extremely important as a strategic priority, and is a prerequisite to allow this strategy of sustainable and profitable growth is obviously how we foster our culture. Our culture is values-based and is coupled with strong compliance and risk management. This has been for the last 10 years, we always said that strong compliance and risk management are a prerequisite to growth. For us, it's all about striking the right balance between empowering our people on one end and ensuring that we live up to the highest standards in terms of compliance and risk. To close, we believe that 2021 has been the year where we have cemented the foundation of our business, and that will allow us to unlock the full potential for 2022 and beyond. We come out of this planning cycle with a very strong track record over the last three years and a fundamental transformation of our business. We have reached new level of profitability in 2021 that we plan to accelerate going forward. We are on track in delivering our 2022 strategic plan, and we are coming out, as I mentioned, in a position of strength for the next planning cycle. On the twelfth of October 2022, we will present our 2025 strategic plan that we will announce in an investors day similar to what we did three years ago. With this, I close the presentation, and Jens, I hand over the floor to you for the Q&A. Thank you very much, Giorgio. Thank you very much, Dimitris, for your presentations. Now, as we usually do, we obviously are very happy to answer the questions. Can I have the first question, please? Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the Q&A session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touch-tone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Daniele Brupbacher with UBS. Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning, and thank you for the presentation. I wanted to ask about the cost outlook for this year, if you could be a little bit more specific in terms of how you see costs developing, probably H1, H2 versus last year. If you could just say a word on how year-to-date trading has been. I mean, we all see markets, but still I'd be interested to hear how year-to-date has been so far. Then a question on NII, and thank you for the additional disclosure. I'm referring to slide 27. I wanted to deepen that a little bit, if that's okay. The CHF 115 million and CHF 61 million, and it's obviously static balance sheet, it's the usual assumptions, but how should we think about this as, you know, how is that impacted by deposit beta assumptions? Do you expect clients to move from a certain level onwards into term deposits, for example? Is that part of that number, particularly 61, I guess, in the U.S. dollar rates? And also, if I recall correctly, EFG as well made some revenues based on swaps, dollar swaps, so the Swiss franc swaps. Would that be included in that number? And linked to this, sorry, and then that was it. The gross margin outlook for 2022. I mean, we can all make assumptions on trading volumes, but is the biggest unknown or the biggest positive driver in your mind the NII at this point, and how do you think about gross margin going into 2022 overall? Thank you. Let me start with the cost question, because as you rightly put it, Daniele, if you were to compare the first half of 2021 and the second half, we are heavier in the second half. Now there are some seasonality effects that have affected the second half, and there are also some investment elements that have also affected the second half. I would say that the best way to view your costs is to ignore that difference between the first half, the second half. I think that for the year 2022, looking at the total of 2021 is a better basis than trying to extrapolate based on first half or second half, because it's gonna be slightly misleading. Now, having said that, I think that the way we manage the business is a combination of revenue and cost. As you know, to some extent, some of our costs are very much variable because of the way that we compensate our frontline, especially on the variable compensation. I think the best way for you to think about it is more along the lines of the cost to income ratio, where for us, the starting point following the footprint is the 78.3%. Now we can argue, and I'll come back to your questions about margin, but the idea there is to start with that around 78.3-78.5%, and use that as the basis for projections of profitability going forward. Having said that, I'll go to your gross margin question. The way we have been working on repricing, we believe that irrespective of the interest rates, we should be improving on our revenue margin on the assumption that trading volumes remain the same as they were last year. Clearly, trading volumes can go either way. But the repricing that we are doing, both on standard fees, on moving clients to higher value products, to introducing more structured products in our portfolio, more private equity elements in our portfolio, all these aspects increase our revenue margin. We would expect that on a like for like basis, the efforts that we are making should give us order of magnitude something between 1 or 2 basis points of revenue margin. Now, clearly, the net interest income component could be very substantial. You know, if I take, like, doing a simple calculation, CHF 115 million of extra revenues on CHF 172 billion of assets, you're talking about 6-7 basis points on top. Now, that also will take a bit of time to come in. It depends on when the actual rate hikes happen. If I look at the history of the impact of the reduction in interest rates in 2020, it takes us probably 6 months to have it flow through the system as things reprice. We are very short-dated in our gaps for interest rate repricing, so it should not take long for these things to come into the P&L. Again, this is a process which will happen partly in 2022, and there's gonna be a tail in 2023. This is the overall outlook I can give on margins. Thank you. Now, final point, because you mentioned the NII, whether it will get the full 115. We will not get the full 115, as I said. In terms of my best guess of how much of that, I would say probably at least two-thirds of that should come in. Historically, especially on the dollar, we've seen that clients that have been with us have not moved too much between non-interest-bearing accounts and interest-bearing accounts. We do expect that we will get the majority of that 115. We will get it partly in the NII line and in the net other income line, as you say, because we have these swaps and they are accounted in a very specific way. Either way, that amount will find itself one way or another into the P&L of the bank. The swaps would not be part of the CHF 115, but overall, we should think about it. Well, I think taking 115 as an example, you might get CHF 70 million in your NII and CHF 40 million in your swaps one specific year, but then you'll see the whole CHF 115 in your NII as rates stabilize. It's a matter of timing. Copy. Understood. Thanks. Just a brief follow-up on the gross margin cost outlook, cost to income ratio question. Would you feel comfortable saying that you should reach the 70%-75% this year even without the NII tailwinds then? I will tell you that the bud- Year-to-date trading, just a word, if you can say something. Yeah, about the current situation, I would say that overall, the year from our perspective in terms of the pipeline that the business is generating started very well. We continue to be very pleased on how the engagement with client is going. Obviously, in terms of trading activity and transactional activity, January 2021 and the first weeks of February are not as they were a year ago. Last year, probably we had the best start of a year in a decade in terms of transactional activity. From that front is a bit subdued. Clearly, you know, on the other hand, volatility can help certain asset classes, which is also good. Now we will see how these geopolitical tensions will play out. Overall, you know, we see a good start of the year, not extraordinary as 2021, but a good start. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Nicholas Herman with Citigroup. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Yes. Good morning. Morning. Thank you. Yes, thank you for taking my questions. Just four quick ones from me, if that's okay. Just coming back to the targets, the follow-up here. You've said that you're on track to deliver 2022 targets. Clearly markets have been very weak so far this year, which would drive quite a market decline in AUM. Obviously markets move up and down, but I just want to clarify if you're reiterating the targets takes those recent market moves into account, or is it as of the end of 2021? That's the first question. The second question, please, is on fee and commission. Can we just talk again about a little bit more about the drivers of the improved fee and commission income? It's a strong showing there. You obviously showed that the very healthy advisory management revenues. Thank you for that disclosure. Are there any one-offs in there? Is there a risk? Also, I guess, is there a risk to the recurring fee margin now that markets have fallen? Or is that margin now really quite sustainable? The margin, obviously not the absolute. Then two quick last ones. Just the share count and that increase by 2% in 2021. Is that a fair run rate going forward now that you've achieved a much stronger level of profitability? Finally, on your capital target under a BIS. Sorry, Nick. Yeah. We could not hear you very well on your third question. Oh, sure. Sorry. The share count rose by 2% in 2021. Is that a fair run rate going forward now that you've achieved a much stronger level of profitability? Finally, the capital target under BIS, you were previously targeting 14% Swiss GAAP. What is the minimum CET1 target under BIS, please? Thank you. Let me start taking these one by one. The first question was whether our targets are there now that we know that markets have moved, market valuations have moved down in the first month of the year. I'll tell you that in terms of market developments, our AUMs have dropped by CHF 2 billion in January. Markets were definitely negative, but the currencies have moved in our favor. We don't expect a CHF 2 billion move to change the targets that we have for the year. It is clearly the targets were set in 2021, but we will not change any of our targets because of what is happening to the markets now. As Giorgio said, we believe that volatility in the market is an opportunity. It's an opportunity to engage clients more in high-value products, high-value advice. It's also an opportunity for clients to trade a bit more. It's also an opportunity for clients to enter more into structured products. We believe that overall, the targets will remain as they were. Second question is one-offs, especially in the fee and commission income. There are no one-offs in the fee and commission income. Everything that could be considered as a one-off, like a disposal of a subsidiary, is in the net other income. The purest line in the P&L is the commission income line. You'll see that in terms of margin, it is 45 basis points of revenue margin in 2021 versus 44. One basis point up. This is the repricing, and we will continue repricing because the brunt of the effort in repricing falls into the commission income line. Third question on share count. You see an increase in number of shares. It includes the issuance of shares for the final acquisition of Shaw and Partners. I think it is not what you see. It includes a one-off element as part of the latest acquisition. It should not be seen as what you should expect on a recurring basis going forward in terms of increase in share count. Your final point on the BIS target, as you said, we had 14%, not as a target, but as a minimum, as a floor under Core Tier 1 as at Q1 under Swiss GAAP. Now we are switching to IFRS BIS. We have not stated a target. The numbers are very close. I think we'll come back with a much more comprehensive capital management strategy in October this year, where we can revisit exactly where we are and what exactly is the best use of our capital going forward. Thank you. That's really helpful. If I could just have one quick follow-up on the fee and commission. I'm not trying to take anything away from the strong fee and commission result, but just so that I understand properly. For the second half rather than for the full year, is it fair to attribute the majority of the improvement in the fee and commission line to Shaw and Partners rather than to the EFG standalone business? Or is that incorrect? No, actually, I think that it is mostly on the repricing. I'm not gonna say that Shaw and Partners did not have a good performance in the second half of the year. Actually, for them, because they have a different financial calendar, is the first half of their financial year, and usually, you know, you always push in the first half of the year. It is repricing. The other thing you need to also understand is that in terms of trading activity, we had more trading activity in the first half of the year. The good months were January, February, March, and in the second half of the year, we had an excellent November in terms of trading. On one hand, you have fees which are more trading, which get replaced with a lot more of the recurring fees in the second half of the year, plus whatever impact Shaw, and Partners might have on the figures in the between the first half and the second half. Okay. Sorry. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Michael Kunz with ZKB. Please go ahead. Yes. Good morning. Can you hear me? Very well. Good. More a number crunching question, referring to page 41 of the presentation pack. Under IFRS, I detect quite an amount of newly booked provisions, the CHF 114 million on the right-hand side, of which CHF 73 million go to external exceptional legal stuff. Could you elaborate a little bit more what stands behind that? And at the same time, I see quite a big release in loss allowance expenses. What's the driving force behind that one? And then, second question, I assume correctly that the CHF 30 million restructuring provision booked last year is not part of the operating expense but is booked below that. Correct? Correct. Yes. Let me take the second one first because it's easier. You're right. There is about a CHF 30 million provision in the underlying for 2021. This is booked below the cost line because this is a provision for future restructuring costs. It has to do with as I mentioned, streamlining of all the footprint locations, so charges that we want to take for discontinued operations, plus some additional restructuring costs that have to do with resources. Having said that, and again, to be clear, this is below the cost line. This is in the provisions line. Having said that, even in the cost line, there are certain restructuring costs that have been recorded in the cost line. There are certain one-offs included in operating expenses, which have to do with the same projects. The difference between the two is pretty much in the cost you take has to do with the current year, and in the provision is providing for future losses, or future restructuring costs in these locations. That is the big difference. The result of this is that clearly we will enter 2022 or we are entering 2022 lighter than what we were exiting 2021. On your first question about the provisions, I think you are 100% correct. There is a CHF 70 million roughly release in ECL, so that's a positive in the ECL line, and an equal, almost equal amount of provision for legal expenses in the provision line. This has to do with the legacy case in Taiwan. The amounts are the same, which means that we had to reclassify a provision that we had as a credit previously into a provision for legal expenses. Net bottom line, it doesn't have an effect. On the balance sheet, it still doesn't have effect. Now, it's carried in a different line. The reason that we are doing this is that through the positive developments of the legal case in Singapore, we set off the loan that we had with the counterparty. Since there is no loan any longer, we cannot hold an expected credit loss when there is no loan. We had to reclassify it in a sense to a different line in the balance sheet, and to a different line in the P&L. Okay, good. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Daniel Regli with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have four questions if I may. Three of them are more follow-up in nature and then one other question. Maybe let's start with this one other question. This one is on net new money, and I wondered whether you could give me a little bit of color on the nature of your strong net new money you have achieved. Where it is particularly or where you're particularly successful in terms of client segments, or are these existing wealthy clients which move assets from your competitors or are these, let's say, newly wealthy clients which have previously not really used wealth management services? If you just could give some color on this. The other ones are two follow-ups on the net interest income guidance you gave on page 27. Is this to be understood as being more or less equally distributed between the different rate hikes? Or is there something like a threshold, which then results in the impact of the first two rate hikes would be substantially lower than the impact on the latter rate hikes? The second question on this, is there any marginal cost attached to this additional net interest income? The last question is also a bit on the cost development in 2021. Obviously, you have seen quite a strong pickup in underlying other operating expenses in H2. Is this one-offs you were talking about when answering Michael Kunz's questions on the costs, or is this anything else in particular? Thank you. Daniel, my apologies, I could not hear very well your third question on the costs. Oh, okay, yeah. The cost line in particular, the other operating expenses have strongly picked up in H2, and I just wondered whether this is the main driver for this are these one-off expenses you were talking about in relation to restructuring and also a little bit the provisioning you made on the provisions line? Daniel, sorry. I meant the previous question, it was about interest and costs. Is there a marginal cost attached to this additional net interest income, for example, formula-based compensation of your relationship managers? Okay. Okay, maybe I take the first question about the net new assets and a bit to give a bit more color. Maybe I'll make reference to page 15, you know, because basically you said, are they new clients, existing clients, where are they coming from in terms of geographies and sectors and so on. In terms of if you go to page 15, and you look at the right-hand side, you clearly see that we have a very good contribution both from new CROs and the so-called business initiatives. Clearly here for EFG, the majority of these are new clients, but clearly these are clients known to the CROs that we have hired or the new offices. Clearly these are new clients from an EFG perspective, but again, the majority were known to the businesses that we have set up 2-3 years ago. Regarding the existing CSOs that actually were very pleased with the progression that we have had over the last three years, there is a combination of existing clients where I believe with the track record that we have had over the last three years, we were in a better position to improve our share of wallet and obviously to convince most of our clients are multi-bank and and obviously there is clearly a competition to try to attract more business from the other competitor. Since most of our clients are entrepreneurs, when they generate new wealth to try to get a bigger portion of that sooner. Obviously existing CROs, and this I believe is one of the cornerstones of our model, you know, a lot of our CROs are very good in attracting new clients. Existing clients refer new clients. I would say that to conclude on this, from new CROs and business initiatives, this is mostly new clients from an EFG perspective, and existing CROs is a combination. In terms of geographies, if you go to page seventeen, you can see that we are able- I think geographies are pretty clear. Geographies are pretty clear. In terms of sectors, I would say that there is not really a concentration. I can say that the majority of our clients are entrepreneurs, either of first generation or second generation, and you know, but there are no sectors or particular concentration. Again, this is, in my view, another beauty of our model because it's very diversified, that this is what you want in these complex times. Okay. Maybe just a small follow-up. Can you maybe talk a bit about, how you say, rates of, you know, new CROs taking over AUMs from their previous employer? What is your experience? How many or how much of their AUM can normally a CRO take over? Yeah. That's a very good question. For every CRO we recruit, we have a very detailed business cases that we assess together because obviously it's a partnership. This is one of the most difficult variables to mention. To be fair, I would say that on average is probably below 50%. We believe that if a CRO is able to bring between 30% and 50% of what he has had in the previous institution, this is good. Obviously, in terms of culture, we try to onboard new CROs that are able to continue to develop their business, so they will not stop after having brought the first chunk of business that they already had. For us, this is a very important criterion to when we assess. Whether we to go together with new CROs. In this day and age, if you are able to bring more than 50% of your existing book, and there are cases we have had in the last three years, some exceptional cases. This is an exception. Okay. Very helpful. Thanks. Let me take the other three questions. First question was whether the guidance on the NII is linear in some respect. By the way, I wouldn't like to call it a guidance. It is a simple calculation on a static balance sheet. I'm not trying to give forward-looking projections at this point, because clearly we do expect that there's gonna be some clients moving. The dynamic is gonna be different from the static. In this calculation, it is linear. To give you an example, we have 4 hikes on the dollar for about CHF 60 million of incremental revenues. 1 hike would be CHF 15 million revenues. Each one of the rate hikes has the same impact on the revenue side. Thank you. The second question was whether we expect to have any payouts to our CSOs because of additional revenues from NII. As you know, we have a very transparent framework for the compensation of our client officers. If the bank makes money, the client officer is entitled to an increase in the variable compensation. To the extent that the terms that we have actually leads to an increase in the profitability of the client officer, then they will get that incremental cost and incremental variable compensation. To put it in perspective, you know, the marginal cost to income from these things are in the area of 10%-20%. It's not that the On an incremental basis, even in taking a very conservative scenario, the figure is not significant compared to the overall cost to income of the bank. We do expect that the incremental revenues are not gonna be substantial in any way. Final question was about the cost development in 2021, especially the higher G&A in the second half of the year. As I mentioned, there is some investment in there is some seasonality, and there's some one-off. The best way to look at the G&A line, I think, is take the full year 2021 as the basis for any of your calculations. I think taking the second half and doubling it is a misinterpretation of where we are on the cost. I think the basis of what you should take is the full year, and we're actually taking actions to reduce that level of admin costs for 2022. The starting point is, as I said, the full year figure and not the second half figure. Okay, very clear. Thanks a lot for the explanations. The next question comes from the line of Thomas Puhl with AWP. Please go ahead. Yes, good morning. I just wanted also to follow up for the net new assets. Can you still break it down geographically with the Swiss and the Italian business? I would still be interested in how much the Swiss business attracts. Maybe you could also a little bit explain to me the weakness of the Asia business, even after deleveraging of loans, what is influencing the Asia business? Third question, maybe if you could say a little bit if now Russian sanctions because of the current crisis is this impacting the business anyway? What level of importance or how important are Russian clients for EFG? Thank you. Thank you. I... The line was not great, but if I understand correctly, the questions were about the color in terms of NNA on a geographic distribution. The first was about Italy, correct? Switzerland, Italy. Switzerland, Italy. Yeah, Switzerland. Yes. Switzerland. Yes. Switzerland. Switzerland, Italy. Yes. Well, first of all, I think Dimitris made the point during the presentation. I would like to emphasize it. If you look at the page that we also use as our dashboard from three years ago, you can recall that at the time, Switzerland was suffering. Today, in absolute terms, Switzerland is the region that has contributed the most with almost CHF 3 billion in NNA and over 6%, so over our target range, you know. From that front, we are very pleased. I would say that regarding Switzerland, it is the great advantage that is catering to various target markets. Basically, most of the target markets that we have, maybe the only Asian markets they usually book more in Asia directly. Otherwise, from all the markets in Europe and Latin America, clearly, Switzerland is the region that is together with the U.K., probably the most international. In Switzerland, as you know, we are really A private bank because we have strong presence in Switzerland, in Geneva, and in Lugano, and all our three plus branches in other cities. The three hubs are all doing very well in terms of growth. For sure, Zurich is the hub that is growing the fastest. Geneva is doing well. Ticino is probably the most profitable in relative terms, but clearly suffering in terms of growth from the fact that, as you know, the market access to Italy is not existent. The business with Italian residents is a very important business with us. It's one of the top five markets globally that we have, and for Switzerland, one of the top three markets, so remains very important. As I said, the market access is extremely limited, so this is not allowing for the same business development that we can have in other regions. In terms of the expansion onshore, I believe that there, as you have seen, we have decided to discontinue the branch. This will be done this year. We opened the branch basically just before COVID started. It was not a success, so we had decided to close. Nevertheless, Italy remains important. Clearly, our vocation is the cross-border offshore business that again has the constraints that I mentioned. The second question was about Asia. Asia is a business that for us is very important. Excluding the deleveraging, actually the business, and you see this on page 17, is growing. We're not pleased, we're not happy with the rate of growth. Obviously, even excluding the lending side, we are growing at 1.4%, which is below our target range. Obviously Australia is growing very well. Singapore is growing well. We have had obviously because of geopolitical situations, the business where we are focusing all our attention to do the turnaround is Hong Kong. Having said that, for us it's a strategic region, and in all the three centers we are very, very much focused in hiring talent, both on the client relationship officer side, and also to support and control the business. The final question, I believe, was about Russia. Russia, for us and in general, Central and Eastern Europe is one of our target regions, is an important business. Obviously, this, the fact that there might have been tensions, this was known since the fall, so I believe that the first indications about sanction, et cetera, started at the end of November. We have been preparing with all contingency plans. For the time being, there is no issue. Clearly, you know, now besides the business, we hope that reason will prevail and the voice of diplomacy will be stronger and we can find a solution. For the time being, there is no impact, there are no disruptions, but clearly we really hope that these tensions will abate as quickly as possible. The sanctions will not force you to get rid of Russian customers maybe. Sorry, I didn't catch the question. The line is a bit disturbed. You may exit. So if we wanna ex- no, no, no, ob-obviously. Sanctions that you have in place. Well, if there are sanctions here, obviously, again, we have been preparing for that and the objective is to do business in sectors and in areas where you can limit that risk. Obviously, the sanction risk is a risk that we assess every time we do our enhanced due diligence on the clients. I can tell you that in 2014 when the first wave of sanctions happened because of Crimea, the impact was nil. Now we will see how the net is gonna be casted. Obviously all the systems are running to assess. You know, the reality is that if there are sanctions more than exit, you have a situation of freeze. Obviously you have to We will cooperate with the authorities and ensure compliance with the rules and regulations once this happen. Can we have the next question, please? Yes, the next question comes from the line of Andreas Venditti with Vontobel. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you. I hope my line is better than the one before. Actually I've nothing much left, just a few details maybe. Could you please comment on the tax rate and also maybe provide an outlook on that? Next one would be, if I look back over the last three years, you had obviously substantial growth in the business, yet risk-weighted assets were basically flat. Here as well, if you can provide an outlook, assuming that business continues to grow, can you continue to keep risk-weighted assets flat, or have these, let's call it, optimizations, run out? Lastly, maybe on this, maybe a follow-up on, I think Michael asked about, the provision lines and the reclassification that you made. Now, maybe you can remind us on this case. I guess you won. I don't know whether it's a partial step in Taiwan. Is that the reason why you actually kept this amount as a legal provision, rather than basically releasing the amount? Thank you. Let me start with the last question first. To give you a bit of history, okay, this loan is a loan that goes back many, many years, and the first time it became a problem was in 2014. Now, since then, there have been litigation procedures in Taiwan, there have been litigation procedures in Hong Kong and in Singapore. The latest developments, let's call it the last 18 months, is that EFG prevailed in Hong Kong. Hong Kong was an attempt by the other party to enforce a judgment that they had had in Taiwan. Hong Kong now is done, and there was no possibility of appeal. EFG's win is final in Hong Kong. There was another element of the dispute that had to do with the validity of the pledge that we have on the collateral, because this was, roughly speaking, a CHF 200 million loan that carried an equal amount of collateral in cash. That dispute was in Singapore. We won in the first instance, and we got that verdict from the court in November 2021. That has been appealed by the other side, so we expect the appeal process to go through 2022. Since we won in the first instance, we set off the loan that we had at the time against the collateral. We had a CHF 200 million loan and CHF 200 million collateral, and all of it now is gone. At the time, we were carrying about a CHF 70 million provision on the books, and what we had to do was to move that provision from an expected credit loss to a general legal provision, because now we didn't have a loan for it to be attached. In terms of our own assessment, I believe that we are conservative, because even though we actually won in Singapore, we didn't change the overall amount of our provision. We just moved it from one place in the balance sheet to another place in the balance sheet. We will reassess that provision as we move along during the year. Like, we will receive more information towards the second quarter of 2022, possibly a resolution, and final court decision by the end of the year. We will have another two dates, at least, during the year, where we will be required to reconsider this provision. Given the outcomes of the court cases as of now, I think that we are erring on the side of caution by not adjusting that provision in any way. To your other two questions, Andreas, tax rates, I think that you should be looking at something which is of the order of 20%, give or take, in terms of tax rates. We make most of our profits in Switzerland as a legal entity. The overall blended rate that we have in Switzerland is close to 20%. All the other jurisdictions are pretty much everybody's converging to rates around 20% in any case. I don't expect that we will have a significant deviation. We're trying to optimize, but even if you optimize, maybe you get it to 19% or 18%, it's not gonna be much lower than that in any case from a tax perspective. Finally, on your questions about risk-weighted assets, you are very correct. We have been optimizing risk-weighted assets for the past 10 years, as Giorgio says. Is there more room? Look, it depends because clearly, for us, if you're increasing your Lombard loan lending, that doesn't carry risk-weighted assets in most of the cases. If you're growing your mortgage book, then that carries some risk-weighted assets with it. I would say that for me, increasing the risk-weighted assets as you move along with the business, so if the business is growing by 5% and risk-weighted assets are also growing by 5%, is more of a blessing than it's actually a problem. Because through that, I'm sure that we will make more than enough revenues to compensate for the use of our capital, and that will lead to actually what we're trying to do is make and use our capital in the most efficient way. We will continue optimizing for sure, but increasing the risk-weighted assets for me is a positive rather than a negative because it will lead to high profitability in the end of the day. Perfect. Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Mr. Herman with Citigroup. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you. I just had a couple of follow-ups, if that's okay. Just firstly, on the pipeline, would you mind that you referenced the very strong pipeline. Could you just expand on that, please, in terms of regions, et cetera? That'd be interesting. Secondly, on CROs, apologies if missed, but could you provide an outlook for hiring and for the number of CROs for this coming year, both with and without the sale of AMG? Finally, on treasury, it looks like you shrank the Treasury book in the second half. Just curious what the thought process was there, please. Thank you. Sorry, the last point I didn't catch. Sorry, Nick, the last point I didn't catch. I was just saying it looks like you shrank the treasury book. Is that correct? Okay. In the second half? Just wanted to understand the thought process and the outlook for that, please. Okay. Let me take maybe the first two on pipeline and CROs and, Dimitris will take the one on the treasury book. Regarding the pipeline, what I can mention, you know, is to give you the overall color. I cannot go and we do not disclose in detail the pipelines we have by region. That is, we have established since 2019, basically since the announcement three years ago of our strategy of profitable and sustainable growth, a very disciplined and systematic pipeline process that is basically a continuous process on a daily basis with touch points on a weekly basis, where all the CROs. This was also made possible by, let's call it some digital tools that we have introduced. At the beginning, they were very rudimentary and slowly and continuously we are improving where all the CROs, all the heads of private banking, all the regional business heads are involved. We can monitor every single day what is the status of our pipeline by region, by CRO, by business. I think this has been, you know, and at the end has demonstrated to be a very positive process. At the beginning, there were some resistance, let's say. At the end, they, you know, everybody realized that this was in the interest of, let's say, of the banker to start with and on the business, second. What I can tell you is that all regions have a very good pipeline. Usually the pipeline, to be very blunt, we split it between the so-called big deals and the more flow business where we take big deals, CHF 50 million-plus. This is just a convention. I would say that between the flow business and the big deals, we have a 50-50, 40-60 ratio, depending on the quarter. The big challenge for us is to ensure that the pipeline translates into real business. This is where certain quarters are very successful. When you have also here more than 50% conversion ratio is very good. At times, it goes much lower than that, and then we are not so pleased. The process is working. You know, I recall one of your first broker reports. You know, three years ago, you were talking about the self-help, which I recall that analysis very well. This is for me, one of the areas where we have self-help because our CROs are able to go and try to develop business with their clients irrespective of the cycle, irrespective of the, let's say, contingent situation. At the moment, to close this point, the pipeline is good across geographies and you know also. It has become almost quote-unquote "a stigma," not for a CRO not to have a pipeline because everybody. By the way, there is also the other side of the medal. If as a banker, you have a CRO, you have a big deal, and this is visible for everybody, the whole organization is gonna try to support you to translate that business, that pipeline into real business. If you come up on a Friday afternoon with a very urgent deal, then I can tell you that the support is a bit different. Now, in terms of CROs, for us, organic growth remains the focus. Obviously, three years ago, we were talking about how to deploy our capital also for add-on acquisitions. The truth of the matter is that we managed to, and we are extremely happy with the acquisition of A&G. Sorry, of Shaw and Partners in Australia. We have acquired the last 25% in 2021, but the market has been extremely dry. The key focus is on CSOs. On CSOs, our guidance, because there's never been a target, our guidance was between 70 and 100 new CSOs every year, which we have managed despite the pandemic. Obviously 2019 was a fantastic year, in excess of 160 new CSOs. In the last two years, during the pandemic, we managed to do over 60 every year. We are focusing on teams. We are focusing on all locations and all regions. Again, you know, we have a good pipeline also there. We work with a concept of you know, pipeline. All the you know, from the heads of private banking, other CROs that are you know. When other CROs are involved in recruiting CROs, the chances of success are greater. The heads of private banking, the regional business heads, myself, the chair of private banking, we are all involved in interviewing. I always said that for us, the two biggest investments in our firm are hiring CROs and the investments in the digital strategy and IT. For us, this is a very important point. 2022, the pipeline remains good. Obviously, as you know, the first quarter is the slowest quarter because people wait for the bonus. Clearly, after this presentation and in April, we are all ready from the starting blocks to go ahead and, you know, double down in our efforts to attract strong teams and strong CROs to us. Giorgio, if I could just follow up quickly on both of those points. Just on the pipeline, just roughly overall, how does the pipeline of new business compare to 6 months and 12 months ago, please? I mean, obviously, you don't have to give, you know, the exact, the absolute numbers, but just curious how it compares. Then on the CSOs, excluding obviously you're going to be selling EFGAM this year, on a like for like basis without EFGAM, can I read from your, from your answer though that you expect the like for like number of CSOs to increase this year? Okay. On the pipeline, I would say that, you know, our pipeline generation is relatively similar to what it was in the previous year because the pipeline generation is a function obviously of the CSOs that you have and the CSOs that you have hired, and clearly more or less the ratios are stable in that respect. You can see that's why we give this disclosure on page 15, the various classes of CSOs. Regarding the absolute number of CSOs, look, our intention is obviously to increase both the number of CSOs and what we call, which you have on page 16, the productivity of CSOs. We are very pleased that we have crossed the 300 million mark of average IUM per CRO. This is something that, you know, we had to catch up with competition. I think we are getting there. Now, clearly, our model is extremely meritocratic, you know, every CRO team has a P&L. We have clear targets and milestones, and we apply a very systematic performance management system. If certain CROs do not perform, I'm afraid, it's in the best interest of both parties to part ways. Again, for me, it's difficult to give you a clear guidance on the, you know, on the absolute number. I can tell you that our objective is to hire, you know, if I could, I... You know, we have no limitation in hiring. The only limitation is the quality of the teams that we can find. If we can hire between 70 and 100 every year or even more, we will do it. In terms of performance management, again, here the key is to have a strong hit ratio, success ratio when we hire, and that I can tell you that obviously during the pandemic, this was not great for obvious reasons. This is the function. Our objective is to grow both, but we will never compromise in terms of quality, neither when we hire nor when we have, you know, to do the performance management assessment. That's helpful. Thank you. Just to go back to your question about the investment book, if I understood correctly. In our presentation on page 23, we show an investment book of CHF 5.9 billion. If I look back, that figure was CHF 5 billion at the end of 2020 and CHF 6.4 billion in the half year of 2021. You're right, it has gone a bit down compared to the half year, but it is also up from the previous year. Overall, the fact that we are as liquid as we are, and actually we're improving our liquidity, means that we are investing even more in this book. The overall trend is up rather than down. Now, timing between when the treasury team invests or does not invest is also a matter of the investment decision at the time, so. The trend is to actually increase that book rather than to decrease that book. Okay. Thank you. Today's last question is a follow-up from Daniel Regli with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thanks a lot for having me again. I have two quick follow-up or just small question on the CSOs. If you're showing these numbers of CSOs, or particularly new CSOs, is it correct that you're always talking about external senior hired CSOs, or is there also something like internal education of junior CSOs, which is then leading to higher CSO numbers? Then, the second question, again, on this NII guidance, and I think you regularly mentioned that you do not expect to see the full CHF 150 million benefit of this NII, even if the rates increase as expected. What are the reasons for you not seeing the full amount of this CHF 150 million? Okay, on the first question, the great majority are new CROs coming from the market. Yes, we include in these numbers also when we have promotions, for example, from you know, senior CSOs, client service officers, that then take over the book, or if somebody, for example, retires or they branch out and they go independent because they have obviously qualities in terms of attracting new clients, that can make the person a successful banker. Yes, we include that, but it's in these numbers and over the last three years is a smaller number. On the NII, the guidance for us is that the CHF 115, and let's assume there is no leakage, will eventually flow into the P&L. I think the guidance we're trying to give is this will not happen in 2022. The reason it will not happen in 2022 is or it will only partially happen in 2022, because first you need the hike to happen. With the exception of the U.K., the U.S. has not had a specific hike up until today. We're waiting for it in March. Then it takes a bit of time for it to flow through the P&L because you need to have the assets repricing, your liabilities repricing. It doesn't. For our book, because we are very short-dated on our gaps, and there's actually a very nice chart in the annual report, a very nice table where you have all the repricing gaps if you want to see that, it happens usually or mostly within the first three months. Most of the repricing is on the 3-month basis, which means that you get the impact three months after it reprices. We will get something in 2022, depending on when the rates happen. I think we will get pretty much the entire effect in 2023, if that's the case. Okay, there is nothing like an already known second-order impact diminishing this CHF 150 million? No. Function. Okay. Very clear. Thanks a lot. Great. I think that was the questions for today, so I hand over to Giorgio for final comments. Yeah, no. Well, from my perspective, first of all, thank you very much for the questions and for your interest and the support over the years. Again, we hope next time to see you all here in the room. In the last two years of pandemic, we are all used to watch Netflix or the likes with the various episodes. The next episode will be on July 21, and we're gonna present the first half results, where hopefully we will continue with the strong momentum and consistent strategy execution. Then again, the new season will start on October 12, where we will present the 2025 strategic plan and hopefully again that will be in person. It's gonna be like three years ago at the SIX ConventionPoint. Hopefully we will be able to see you again in person. With this, thank you very much. Have a nice day and,