....really something to worry about. And, I would say even sentiment is improving, surveys among corporates are improving, and, we also see a lot of talks about investment plans, and, that's good. So overall, we are very optimistic also for Q2. Then perhaps staying with the macro picture for a little bit. There's clearly been a lot of press noise recently on Russia. Maybe you could just give us an update in terms of the latest facts on the ground as you see them. Yeah, I mean, Russia is difficult. I think we are very happy that we have managed down the net exposure onto a very significant amount. You'd think where we started at the beginning of the war, and we are now at down to EUR 171 net exposure. That's clearly something which is not anymore of a worry. We, however, have a subsidiary there, and we see a lot of claims filed against U.S. and European banks in Russia at the moment, and that is a very-- And it's also a worry for our entity there, but we closely monitor the situation, that's what we can do. We act in compliance with all of the sanction regimes. We are basically in a complete hibernation mode, so no new business, running further down the things. We have proactively reached out to every client, asking them to switch banks to stop business with us there. But still it states that we have EUR 460 million of equity in this legal entity. So, the impact, the maximum impact, however, on capital can be only something around 10-15 basis points, because we have already a negative currency reserve booked against our equity in our capital, which halves the effect anyhow on the capital side, and then, yes, we might see something on the P&L side, but we just stay closely to the situation and yeah, try to manage it. And then if we switch gears over to NII, you know, you raised the 2024 NII outlook to around EUR 8.1 billion, and that was despite seeing higher than anticipated deposit beta trends in Germany. So perhaps run us through your latest expectations and some of the key moving parts. Yeah, I mean, as always, there are basically four factors really influencing our NII. And there are three positives and one, you could say, a negative one. So the three positives are clearly that, starting with mBank, that mBank is doing better NII-wise than we thought, because National Bank of Poland clearly communicated that they wouldn't see big rate cuts this year. This improves the guidance on mBank. Second part is that the average level of interest rate level for ECB is higher than originally thought, and we now have put into our calculations something around 3.8%. We will see even whether we reach that or a bit even higher, but for the moment, we have the 3.8%. And the third thing is, and that has a link to the deposit beta, is that we have seen much higher inflow on the deposit volumes than we originally thought, which also had a positive effect. And then clearly, the higher deposit beta is a flip side to that. But this is why we are saying you really have to... You can't see isolated only on the deposit beta, because we explicitly, intentionally increased deposit beta by having very attractive offerings out there on the private client side for call money. And we have seen the effects on that, yes, on the deposit beta side, but also on the volume side, and therefore on the NII side. I wanted to focus a bit on the replication portfolio for a moment. So that's, that's now at EUR 124 billion. In Q1, you reduced slightly the contribution you expect from that in 2024. Could you maybe run us through what are you trying to achieve with that, with that portfolio, how it's constructed, and how we can think about it as a supporting element to NII over the next few years? I mean, the replication portfolio is clearly there to smoothen effects of interest rate developments, and it's really something which sets the basis for also constant growth on NII, which we expect until 2027. What we have said in Q1 is that we would even increase the replication portfolio again to also further stabilize NII for the years to come. I would still say that the additional, we always talk about additional benefits from the replication portfolio for this year will be up to EUR 400 million, so that is not really a change. Then, it will drop the additional benefits in 25 because of all the changes, but then it will pick up again, which is why we still are very optimistic to achieve our midterm target of 2027, the EUR 8.4 billion NII. The replication portfolio clearly plays an important part, at least on the private client side, specifically. And then if we, if we go a bit deeper into the deposit pass-through effect in Germany, how do you see that evolving in a scenario of, of rate cuts? You know, are you gonna be pricing volumes or the pricing of those incremental deposits? And how do we think about the competitive dynamics as well in that regard? But first, I think we need to differentiate between corporate clients and private clients. So corporate clients is a very different thing. The changes which we have seen in corporate clients with respect to the deposit beta is less than that, the agreements with the corporate clients have really changed. They're pretty stable. It's more about corporate treasurers really also maximizing and optimizing their cash management and still moving some surplus liquidity from sight deposits into call money or term money, where they just get higher interest rates. So you can put that one aside. On the private client side, it's very much a management as you said also dependent on customer reactions, but also competitor reactions. We have actually decreased quite significantly our offerings for the expiring volumes as we speak. For May, for example, the offer for Commerzbank is now lower to 3%, in parts even to 2.5%. And coming from higher levels, like coming from 3.5%. So that should bring the deposit beta down, but automatically it will come up again this afternoon, if we believe that ECB will do what we all expect, at least lowering the interest rates by 25 basis points. And that's what we will observe also in the coming weeks and months. So, in the moment, the volumes are more sticky than we thought, so positively speaking. But we know that can quickly change whenever there is a competitor out there with a high reach, with an attractive offering out there. You will see the interest rate shoppers to move around. That is specifically true for the Comdirect clients. It's less true for the Commerzbank clients because they are much more sticky. And then if we think about volumes, particularly in Germany, you know, the bank has seen the loan book reasonably flat over the last year, but mortgages did pick up by about 70% sequentially in Q1. So how do you assess the outlook for mortgage growth from here? So, mortgage, I mean, the activity has recovered, but we still stay cautious on it. As long as we do not see really a significant decrease in interest rate level, mortgage business will stay lower than the high times, which we have seen two, three years ago. And that's also due to the fact that prices have come down, but not to such a significant amount that they equal that out. However, I mean, we have, we have assumed in our, in our strategic plan that the absolute mortgage volume would come down. We haven't really changed that. I mean, probably a little bit more positive on it, and we will see over the summer when we do the planning for the next years, whether we adjust that and, and increase it further. But it has stabilized much more than we probably have thought, six months ago. On the corporate client side, it stays what we said. We see, and we believe that there will be loan growth. We actually really start also to see it, so that's positive, and we have embedded in our plans towards 2027, loan growth from the corporate client side, because we really believe in the need for investments, being it for sustainable transformation or digital transformation. And then turning to mBank, you've mentioned before you'd expect NII this year to be higher than last year. In the context of the lower rate environment in Poland, which segments would you be focusing on, and how do you see the more medium-term outlook for margins there? I mean, the thing is, if you look on mBank, what they have managed to do is that despite the fact that you have seen already in last year a lowering of 100 basis points, the interest rates have come down by 100 basis points. They have kept or they keep their interest NII level pretty stable, and that clearly has to do with the fact that they're improving the things. So they have lowered the offering to the clients, but kept the volume. So, they have had a very successful, I would say, strategy, not only on deposits, but also on loans. Then if we switch over to fees, you know, fees are roughly a third of revenues last year. How are you thinking about that revenue pool on the go forward? And especially, I think if we talk about allocating capital, you know, when you look at that +4% fee growth objective, is that the right sort of run rate when you pull all those different parts together? Yeah, I mean, the 4% is really something which we wanna manage year on year, which is, I mean, this is not an easy thing, but we think we can achieve that, and we will clearly prove this year that we will manage to do that. And I think Q1 has given a flavor on that, but it also means that we expect that, different to the last years, specifically Q3, Q4 will be probably lower than Q1 and Q2. That's a natural thing, but less, much less reduced than we have seen in the years before, which is good. And we also had the closing of Aquila on this Monday as we speak, so we will also fully consolidate Aquila into that. And that will also clearly benefit. Specifically, we have plans to further increase net commission income by the offering of Aquila. Maybe on that topic, what does Aquila enable you to do, I guess, or what does it bring to the business? It's just an addition to our value proposition. I mean, we have very solid and very good relationships with asset management partners, which we use for our offering. But YIELCO, but also Aquila, serve to enhance our value proposition, to make it special, to have something which you can't get when you're not coming to Commerzbank. Then if we look at costs, so clearly, cost to income ratios have been getting better across the industry, mainly due to the momentum we've seen on revenues. But if we look at absolute costs, for yourselves in Q1, they came down, you know, Q1 Q&Q, but also year-over-year. So maybe if you could help us understand what's happening beneath the surface there on the various moving parts. Obviously, Q&Q included the lower burden from the SRF. Yeah. But then you also have the labor agreements, which are starting to kick in. So just how do we think about all those headwinds and tailwinds on the forum? Yeah, it means lots of management, lots of cost discipline, which we also need, for the coming quarters. I mean, we still benefit also from some parts where we have effects from Strategy 2024, so there will be still people leaving in the next quarters, which have signed agreements with us out of Strategy 2024. That's one part. But then you spoke about it, we have about to start negotiations with unions about the pay scale workers in Germany. That will be interesting. They have already announced the first strike before they have even started negotiations. That tells you a little bit how the atmosphere, et cetera, is. I think that will not have a big impact on 2024, but it will definitely have an impact on 2025 onwards. Also, we see outside of Germany that the inflation trends are high. Take Poland, they see wage increases year-on-year, 10%. That's a lot. So you have to work against that, and in our case, it's really about sourcing. We think about still moving staff and people to nearshore locations or even further away to Kuala Lumpur and things like that, to reduce costs. We think about using AI to increase efficiency, and we explore already different opportunities on that. We're also looking very carefully on our non-personal cost side and how to improve purchasing processes and stuff like that. So it is an ongoing thing where we need to, on the one side, we see an increase of costs also because regulatory requirements are still increasing as we speak. And we need to balance that out. I mean, the new AML directive is about to come in two years' time, when they really reduce the review cycles from 10 years for your low-risk clients to five years. And you imagine we have 10 million of private clients, which are not due every 10 years, but every fifth year, that makes a difference. People need to reflect on that. Yeah. And then, if we think about asset quality trends, you know, you did 11 basis points cost of risk in the first quarter. You know, notwithstanding the comments you made at the beginning about the macro environment in Germany, uncertain but improving, what is really driving that incredibly benign sort of outcome on cost of risk? Is this... Are we realistically going to see a sort of lower for longer backdrop in terms of cost of risk? Yeah, I mean, in the moment, we really benefit from a very well-diversified portfolio. And then we also benefit from a high resilience of all corporate clients, and it's very clear that it's getting tougher and tougher to really defend our Top-Level Adjustment out there because macroeconomic conditions are improving. So we will definitely have a talk about that one in the next quarters, what to do with it, because we still have the Top-Level Adjustment of more than EUR 400 million out there. And, I think the guidance of less than EUR 800 is also given Q1 results. Also, what we see in the moment, ongoing Q2, will be interesting, where we end up, and we said that we are rather positive on that side. And we always said that, I mean, for our size, of our business model, probably, a normalized risk result is rather something around EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million. So you can obviously see the questions on my paper, because the next one was about the EUR 423 million TLA adjustment. But so just on that 423, so how should we think about what are the, the trigger or the hurdle that makes you think about whether we can really keep holding onto it? Well, actually, I mean, we have, based on... I mean, it has changed the Top-Level Adjustment. It started with a Top-Level Adjustment for the pandemic, and then it went on to energy prices and Russian invasion and things like that. Now, it's overall macroeconomic situation that we thought that we would enter, or that we would be in a recession in Germany. So things are changing, so it's really something which we are currently analyzing from our risk management team to see because it's also on a single name basis, on a sector basis, on what's still valid and what is still worth to keep, and what is no longer necessary and should be released. That's basically an exercise as we speak. Considering all those different moving parts of the P&L, you're guiding for higher net profit year over year, 2024 versus 2023, and RoTE of at least 8%, but Q1 was 10.5% headline. If I take out the Swiss franc mortgage headwinds, it was closer to 15%. So maybe, can you outline some of the headwinds or the risks that you could see evolving through the rest of the year? Yeah, I mean, it's always Q1 is a special one- Yeah ... because costs are normally, anyhow, the running costs are lower because January is normally a slow start. First quarter is always higher because we have also the final booking of variable compensations and stuff like that. That's number one. Then the risk result is always the lowest one, because it's a very short quarter, because the fourth quarter is such a long quarter. So whatever really happens until the end of February is still in the year before and not... So it's only- Yeah ... March we talk about the risk result. So there are many, many factors why you can't compare it, and then we all know that also Q1 from a revenue side, is, is always, one of the strongest quarters. And taking that all together, that brings the mix. But, I mean, we are very convinced that we can, that we can further get the cost-income ratio down. The target is unchanged for 2027. We want to show a 55% cost-income ratio coming from 60% for this year.... And despite all the inflationary things which we talk about, we are still very confident that we, that we can achieve that. You know, as we sit here now, we're, you know, maybe a couple of hours away from what could be the first rate cut. There's a debate about sustainability of bank ROTE as we go through rate cuts. Yeah. You know, your targets for this year and 2027, there's clearly a step up in ROTE through that period of time. So what gives you the confidence that you are gonna see that improvement, and what do you think is maybe perhaps most misunderstood from the outside as to why that question is posed about ROTE sustainability, when clearly you have an ambition to drive it higher? Yeah. But first of all, I think capital markets are really rather focused on the next, one to two years, and- Yeah ... 2027 is still a little bit out. That's number one. We said pretty clearly that, as long as we have an interest rate level something between 2%-3%, we should be really robust in the setup. I think for us, it's really important that we make progress on the net commission income side to decrease, at least, to a certain extent, dependency of NII. And I think the biggest point is really also keeping the cost discipline while really organizing our RWA efficient growth. Because we clearly want to grow, and parts of our story is now also really about growing the revenues and no longer decreasing it, but really growing it. But it must happen in a cost-efficient way. And then that leads us, I think, nicely onto capital distribution. You know, you're targeting a 70% or at least a 70% payout ratio for this year. Maybe, you know, talk us through how that conversation with the ECB goes when we think about the, just the quantum of the step-up versus what you did in 2023 and 2022. And do you think there's a sort of ceiling that they're comfortable seeing, either for yourselves or for the industry more broadly? I mean, we have laid out very clearly in our capital return policy, so it's very transparent for every stakeholder what we want to do, which is that, we said that, we think that, any payout ratio between 50%-100% is a, is a good one. We also said that our target capital ratio, which we target to have, is 13.5%. Still, Still, we are much higher than that. And, we also said that, for the years 2022-2024, we want to pay out, or target a payout of EUR 3 billion. We have done so far in 2022 and 2023, a 1.4. You can do the math, what's- Yes ... what's left for 2024, and we are very committed to also deliver our promises. And I think we have found a very nice and you could say cautious, but I think a good approach, given our history on what we have seen over the last years since the financial crisis. I think it was a wise decision to take it slow and really start with a 30%, 50%, now 70% +. B ecause we really I mean, we move forward really very much in accordance to our delivery, which I think gives a lot of comfort to all stakeholders, which is important. And, it, however, also means that, most likely, we'll then have a different debate, next year, because, we probably need to step up further, with respect to the payout ratio, to really, get in the direction of our, target capital ratio. And then sticking with this year, you've mentioned before the application of the buyback after the first half results have been published. If we think about Q1 and what you've seen in Q2 so far, I guess, what's your current confidence level on that application, and, and how do you see the timing of execution? Yeah, I mean, confidence level is very high, so, we are... It's, it's- I mean, it's still, some weeks to go, until August, but, it's clearly that we start to prepare for that. And, we are also very confident that we will, submit, the request, and then it's, it's very clear, it's, up to four months, it takes, to get the approval. And, then we plan to, to start, we'll see how we really do that, whether we do that in, one tranche, two tranches. We haven't made up our mind. It's also based on the discussions which we have with the, with the ECB. But it's clear that we want to be finished with share buyback before end of March, because then the season for the next AGM starts, and we always have this approval of 10%, and we want to make full use of that, for 2024, and then apply for the next one, in the next AGM. So there's a clear logic- There's a- ... which we have to follow. Yeah. And then if I think about sort of in the, in the medium term, and you referenced some of this before, the ambition to take the distribution or the payout ratio closer to equal to the net result post AT1s. Could you kind of help us understand within that, you know, ambition to get the capital ratio down, the role of regulatory headwinds, Basel IV, and also the RWA inflation, how that kind of works alongside a 90%+ - Yeah ... payout ratio? First of all, I think it's important to say that we always need to have the approval of the regulatory authorities for share buyback, and I think that is always important to keep in mind. In our case, we also need to have the approval of the financial agency, the Finanzagentur in Germany, because of the shareholding of the Bund. But besides that, I think it's really important, as long as we show the profitability, that we show the ability to also, yeah, generate capital if necessary and have enough profitability to be very independent. I think we have a very good argument to further go down this road. And, I mean, we have, if we look at our strategic plans, which we have presented back in November last year, we made it very clear that we also put things like growth into our calculations, and also, Basel is reflected in our calculations. So we assume that we will have the introduction by January 1st, for Europe at least, 2025, and that's basically also included in our plans. And then just one last question from me before we open up to the audience. You know, there's obviously been a lot of headlines in the space recently with regards to M&A. I want to sort of ask you two questions. You know, first of all, how do you see M&A fitting in? You said you're sort of open to opportunities for yourself on that medium-term plan. But then secondly, you know, as the CFO of a major Eurozone bank, how insurmountable do you think those cross-border frictions are really, you know, in the absence of a Banking Union, to really enable that kind of cross-border consolidation that we've talked about? Yeah ... for several years? Yeah. I mean, speaking for Commerzbank, we said that we would always explore, add-on acquisitions smaller ones. I mean, take Aquila, the impact now, on the capital impact, which we will see, by the consolidation, by the closing, is something around 10 basis points. That's really limited. Plus, we are not eaten up in a very intensive, complex integration, because we keep it as a separate unit. It's really, someone who's supporting us in our value proposition. We are rather critical on getting too much involved in things where we do have to do a lot of IT integration work, movements of retail customers from one to another, because we know it's very complex. Also because of consumer protection, very difficult, very costly, and it prevents you of really focusing on other parts, on innovation parts, and et cetera, because you're too much eaten up in putting legacy systems together. That's our standpoint, how we see on that. So add-on acquisitions, we would definitely always consider, as long as they do not slow us down. With respect to the greater picture, I think we need to have the Banking Union and the Capital Market Union before really cross-border consolidation makes sense. Because we all know how difficult it is to get synergies out because of consumer protection and what I have said before. So specifically, cross-border consolidation makes a lot of sense when you can do really efficient resource management with respect to liquidity, but also capital. But as long as we do not have the Banking Union, we don't have that. We really are very much still also focused on the legal entities in the different countries. And that is something which making- which is making cross-border consolidation much harder to argue against shareholders that this is really beneficial. Besides that, I'm a strong believer that we should see cross-border consolidation whenever there is a Banking Union in place, because I believe that Europe is in need of larger banks who can invest more, who can bundle forces to stay competitive and provide an answer against, for example, the U.S. banks. Very clear. Okay, with that, I think we'll just see if there's any questions from the audience. Okay, so maybe one final one from me then before we wrap up. We haven't spent a lot of time talking about sustainability and technology, but they're very much sort of at the center of how you think about taking the bank forward. So maybe if you could just touch upon your key focus areas or your key focus endeavors in those two areas. And then also, if we'd had this conversation three or four years ago, there was neobanks, particularly in Germany, the competitive threat. So has that changed at all, I guess, in the, as you see it today versus, you know, last year? The competitive environment not really has changed. I would say. No. It's... It has been always a very intensive competitive environment, and that has not eased, but also not deteriorated from my standpoint. With respect to what's up on our agenda, I mean, clearly, getting also ready for all the ESG topics, which also come from a regulatory standpoint, but also what do we have on our agenda to support our clients to... On their path towards the sustainable transformation is an important one. So we think a lot about products on the corporate client side, but also on the private client side. Lots about also trainings from our relationship managers to really make sure that they can be supportive, specifically with our medium-sized corporate clients, who, and most of them are overwhelmed, I would say, about the wave which is coming over them with respect to the requirements. And I think we have a good part. We can play a very good part in that, and I think that's more an opportunity for us as a bank than a burden. And then on the technology side, I mean, everybody is talking about AI. We also do. We see that as a, as a, I mean, a real lever for us to clearly also increase customer satisfaction, but first and foremost, at the moment, it's for us an efficiency point. Because we clearly explore things, how we can, how we can, yeah, make things easier with AI and different via chatbots and stuff like that. And increase our sales support efficiency, for example. Also, I would say in the whole area of AML, KYC, sanction screening, this can really make a difference to really absorb some of the burdens we currently see. Very clear. Okay, well, all that's left to be said is thank you so much again for coming and sharing some of your thoughts and giving us some of your time, and we hope to see you again next year in Berlin. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.