Good afternoon. I think I know most of you in the room, or I've met most of you by now, but for those that don't, I'm Jason Goldberg, and I cover the U.S. large-cap bank stocks here at Barclays. Thank you for attending our 21st Annual Global Financial Services Conference. The feedback so far on the presentations and meetings has been terrific, and I'm sure the rest of the conference will measure up. Tons of people to thank, but I'm gonna wait till tomorrow to do that, to make sure everything goes smoothly over the next day or so, and want to kind of maximize our time here at lunch today. Very excited to showcase the home team today at lunch in Barclays. As you know, Barclays is a British universal bank that's diversified by business, by different types of customers and clients, geographies. We have a large-scale retail and business bank in the U.K., and international bank containing a top-tier global corporate and investment bank, and a broad international consumer lending cards and payments franchise. Very pleased to have Venkat return to the stage this year, after making his debut as CEO last year. He's been Barclays' Chief Executive since November of 2021. Prior, he was head of Global Markets and co-president of Barclays Bank, and was Group Chief Risk Officer before that. Joining Venkat on stage this year, we're pleased to have Anna Cross, Barclays Group Finance Director since April of last year. So a perfect business mix and a perfect two perfect resumes should make for a fruitful lunch discussion today. Venkat and Anna, thank you for joining us. Thank you. Our pleasure. We will throw out the first ARS question just because we've been asking these in all the sessions so far. But maybe just begin to kind of set the stage. You know, we're a couple of months since the Q2 earnings release. Maybe just take us through your performance highlights, remind us what you've been emphasizing to investors. Yeah, sure. What's really important to us is to deliver a consistent result, consistent high performance, and Q2 was another step along the way. So we had a great RoE at 11.4, and that brought us to 13.2 for the half year. And really, through every line of the P&L, you know, we saw good income growth, 6% growth, and that's comping against quite a difficult quarter last year. We're very focused on containing our costs, and our costs increased by 2%, so positive jaws. And, you know, very laser focused on maintaining that cost discipline and delivering our commitments. And then impairments, of course, remain pretty benign in the UK and in the US. When we take all of that together, what we saw was fantastic capital generation from all of our businesses that allowed us to deliver not only a strong CET1 ratio, but also, you know, give a really good return to our shareholders in the terms of dividend and buyback. Maybe, pull up and look from a big picture perspective. You know, just giving in my introduction, I talked about Barclays' positioning, you know, across the consumer corporate, payments landscape, across the U.S., U.K. And just, you know, a high level, maybe talk about what you're seeing, hearing from your broad customer base with respect to the overall macro environment. Yeah. So I think, first of all, let's begin here in the United States, where we've got a prominent credit card business, but also a large corporate investment bank business. I think we are seeing the approach to the soft landing, where there may be one more hike left in the Fed, but clearly a normalization of inflation, seeing that growth is continuing to be fairly stable at low levels. And on the credit portfolio itself, fairly benign. I mean, it's behaving the way it should. You know, riskier parts of the businesses have slightly more delinquencies than less risky parts, but it's all within how we would predict it using our models. The U.K. is not that much different in terms of delinquency behavior. It is still fairly benign. The U.K., economically, has had slower growth or less growth, and the U.K. is a few months behind, maybe a couple of quarters behind, both in terms of monetary policy adjustment as well as in terms of the control of inflation. Now, what you saw this morning in the U.K. was a slightly higher unemployment print, which means that the effects of monetary policy tightening, which we've seen over the last year and a half or so, seem finally to be hitting the labor market, and which I think brings us a little closer to the end game. So I think overall, this is working out to be, in this tightening phase, more benign than many had feared, and it is coming towards what I'm hoping is a softer landing. I think, I think that's right. I mean, one of the things I'd call out is that, despite the fact the affordability pressures are really out there, we know that, our customers are acting proactively and rationally, and that's both our retail customers and our wholesale clients. So, for example, in the UK, we see customers changing their spending behavior, we see them paying down their debts, we see them being really thoughtful about where they place their deposits to get the highest yield. So they're really managing their balances proactively. So we're not seeing that credit stress. Our mortgage book in the UK- Yeah ... continues to perform really well. Actually, in the UK, you know, we stress our affordability very significantly. It's one of the conduct rules that we have. So that's really playing out actually to the customer's benefit and our credit benefit. So, we're really well placed, though, I think both in terms of the credit decisions we've taken in the past, the provisions we've got on the balance sheet, but also, you know, some of the extra protection that we've put around ourselves in terms of our, you know, securitizations in across wholesale. Let me put up the next ARS question to get the audience involved. What are you most concerned about for Barclays returns outlook in the current environment? I guess we can come back and address that, but I guess, you know, when you think about returns, you know, Anna, you mentioned 13.2% RoTE in the first half. Obviously, appears likely to be up over 10% for the year. But you know, looking out, what kind of returns do you think Barclays is capable of? Yeah, I mean, let me just add to what Anna said. I mean, looking at 13% so far for the first half of this year, but that builds on two years of, you know, over eleven double-digit returns, 11%, and 13%, or 13%, 11% for the past two years. And that, by the way, is true not just at the aggregate group level, but it's true across the businesses of the group, all performing at a double-digit level. So what you're seeing is businesses that operate in the manner we'd expect them to, through the different ups and downs that they individually experience, as well as put together, give a fairly stable earnings profile to the bank. And so we are you know, our target is above 10%, and we are fairly confident of meeting that target for this year, 2023. And as we said, you know, we see the monetary policy environment and the economic environment being stable as we approach the end of the year, and consumers behaving in the way Anna said, which is tightening their balance sheet and being prudent themselves. Which when you add their individual credit risk posture to our credit risk posture on top of that, makes us believe that we've got a fairly you know, well controlled and good portfolio. I guess it's interesting, when you look at the audience response, there seems to be equal concern about the revenue outlook and the regulatory outlook. I guess when you think about, you know, how Barclays is positioned, I guess maybe where are you kind of most concerned about and, you know, how you're approaching it? So I think on the revenue side, what you're seeing is obviously the normalization of interest rates and the stabilization of that aspect of our earnings. You continue, I think, on the investment banking side, many of the people at the conference have spoken about it. This stabilization in the market view, in, in the markets and in the view, is leading to some hope and expectation of a revival of activity, which we are seeing very, very early signs of, but it'll take time to play out. You know, it's not something that's happening this week or this month. And I think on the regulatory outlook, the rules are fairly fresh, a little fresher in the United States than they are in Europe, and it's complex, it's large, we are multi-jurisdictional. We have to digest the impact, but suffice it to say that we'll work with the impact and we'll manage our business, you know, appropriately in line with the rules. I guess you mentioned the interest rate backdrop and, you know, when I asked around, you know, in Barclays investors, you know, net interest margin actually came up a lot, in the UK. You know, in July, you lowered guidance modestly, I think from 3.20% to 3.15%. Can we talk to what factors could lead to further changes going forward? And perhaps you can talk to, your structural hedge program and how that will work to help to sustain margins. Yeah, sure. I think, as we go into this, Jason, it's really important to understand our UK net interest income in the context of the group. So because it's a little bit different from both our UK peers and indeed our US peers. So for Barclays, about 50% of our earnings come from net interest income, and of that, about half of it is BUK. So it's our retail business, and that's the number that we're focused on here. So it gets a huge amount of attention, but I keep reminding people we've got net interest income from our corporate book and from our private bank as well. Hopefully, one day someone will ask a question on that on a call. But in terms of the UK NIM, what we called out at the half year were really trends around how customers were managing their deposits. As interest rates continue to rise, what we see is that they're using their deposits to manage their daily lives. They're managing the affordability pressures that Venkat talked about, and it's coming from rates and inflation. So we've seen a slight reduction in, you know, balances across the industry. Barclays is no different. We're seeing customers seeking higher yields on their savings products. So really what we guided to at the half year was a continuation of those trends, that we expected deposit levels to fall within retail banking and for customers to continue to move their money towards higher yielding deposits, and actually for savings pricing across the industry to rise. Into Q3, those trends are persisting, which is what we expected. It's what we should expect given the macro backdrop. Now, clearly, that has, that has some impact on NIM, and it's important to note, I think, that, you know, we're in an environment that we've never been before, seeing rates rise rapidly. And so there's some uncertainty here, but actually, there are also some positives underpinning NIM, one of which you've mentioned, which is the structural hedge. But one of the other things that we've seen through 2023 is a real compression on the mortgage side. I think we and our peers are all calling out that we expect that compression to ease somewhat as we go into 2024. That will lessen the impact on NIM, but what's most important is the structural hedge. That's there for us to manage the stability of our UK retail income. And what we have is a significant amount of that hedge, GBP 50 billion, coming to maturity in 2024, at rates of around 1%, that will, you know, get rolled at the prevailing rate right now. So that gives us some real stability to the NIM as we look forward, you know, above and beyond the deposit trends that we're seeing. Maybe shift gears in terms of expenses and just the cost base, in terms of, you know, how are you managing costs in the current inflationary environment, and what are you doing to balance kind of the desire to continue to invest in the business, invest in technology, yet, you know, managing the company for the current landscape? Why don't I pick up costs- Yes. And you can, you can go with inflation with investment. So we're super focused on cost and on cost discipline, and we gave some very clear guidance at the beginning of the year, around expecting to be in the low sixties for cost-income ratio, and also that Q1 would be the highest operating cost point for the year for both the CIB and the group. And we reiterated that guidance at the half year. And for us, what we're doing is we're very focused on generating efficiencies to offset the impact of inflation. We've done that successfully so far, but then across each division, we're approaching costs slightly differently. So BUK, our retail business, very focused on transforming that business to make it more digital, more efficient. Within CCP, which is our consumer cards and payments business, that's got U.S. cards in it and a private bank. That's a business that we're growing, but with discipline to create operating leverage, positive jaws. And then within the CIB, we've been investing very selectively in businesses that contribute to, you know, the, the continued great performance of that business. And we're focused over time in generating positive jaws in that business, too. Venkat? Yeah, I mean, just to emphasize what Anna has said, there's a part of investment that we make which continues to give us cost benefit, and the digitization of our BUK retail offerings is exactly about that, investing in technologies that later on you can manage, other costs better. And then we will continue to invest in areas that allow us to have, to generate free income in a relatively capital-light way. Our wealth business and our private bank is one part of that, and, you know, we will invest in those things which, over a long period, will provide attractive returns to our shareholders. Maybe we'll put up the next ARS question. But how comfortable are you with Barclays' asset quality or provi-- and provisioning? Just maybe we could expand upon that, but, you know, there's kind of limited signs of credit stress out there. Just how do you see credit performance developing from here across the portfolios? I think there's particular interest in the UK. Yeah, it's interesting. As rates have continued to rise in the UK and inflation's been a bit more persistent than perhaps we expected, we saw a very natural reaction from the market, and analysts actually predicted higher levels of impairment. I think what we're finding that is that our customers are sensitive to interest rates, but just not in that way. We're seeing them manage their deposits very actively, and on the asset side, they're proving much more resilient than perhaps the outside world expected. You know, in Q2, our impairment charge I think was lower than consensus anticipated, but it was the size and in the shape that we expected. Predominantly focused on our U.S. cards business, which is a business that we're growing, and one where we're seeing impairment trends sort of normalize in line with the industry. So we're seeing no difference there to our U.S. peers. We're seeing an increase in delinquency, but within normal bounds as that, you know, business continues to grow. In the U.K., actually what we've seen is much more conservative asset behavior from customers. You know, very little market growth across unsecured. Actually, our secured book performs very well. I mentioned before the affordability testing that we do, but also, you know, nearly 50% of our book is on a five-year fixed rate, which means customers have the opportunity to manage their financial position before they refix. We reiterated our guidance, and it's good to see that, folks agree with us, around 50-60 loan loss ratio for the full year. That gives some headroom in the second half, both for seasonality and some deterioration, if that's what happens in the macroeconomy. You know, overall, we feel like we're really well positioned. Let me go to the next ARS question. What do you think it'll take for Barclays to close its valuation gap? And before I ask the next question, I'll warn you. So we polled investors before this to kind of what's on your mind, so it's credit quality, NIM, ROE, and expenses. Maybe not surprising. The next question comes from my wife, but Barclays is trading at 0.5x tangible book, which she thinks is too low. What do you think the market is missing, and what are you doing to change that? You might get a better answer from my wife. So obviously, it's a question that preoccupies my mind, preoccupies Anna's mind, and that much of our senior management. I think that at the end of the day, there are two important things for us to emphasize in our performance and to convey to you, our investors and our shareholders, and including Jason's wife. The first is that we, actually three things. The first is that we run each of our businesses in such a way as to produce attractive, high, stable ROTEs, right? And in a way that they can look at and they can say, "Yes, this is predictable performance. These are high ROTEs." We went through the last couple of years, we've been doing that, but we need to continue to show that. The second is that the composition of the bank comprises businesses which, when put together, because we know individual businesses have seasonality, produce the same thing at the group, right? So we must be in businesses which matter and operate them well. And as you've just been hearing from Anna, you've been hearing from me, if you look at our footprint in the investment bank, I mean, if you want to look at the scale and scope of our investment bank, just look around you in this room, and just look at this conference, and look at the reach of this conference. We are the sixth-ranked investment bank in the world in banking, and in trading, and in markets, and many segments of that, we are much higher than that because there are things we don't do. We're sixth ranked globally, but we have a smaller footprint in Asia. We're sixth ranked globally, but we don't have a commodities business, nor do we intend to, right? Which means there are some things we are doing much better at in certain regions. So that's a great at-scale business. The scale business in the U.K., you know, we are in every part of that economy. There are some things which we need to do better, like wealth, and the monetization of our capability in payments. And our U.S. credit card business, you know, including the Xbox card, which I spoke about yesterday, is a real jewel. And there are things that, where there's tremendous opportunity to grow. So I think we've got to show, A, that we can operate these businesses very well at good low you know, ROTEs. B, that there is the right package well put together, and C, that we emphasize shareholder returns. And you've seen that in the first half, showing our willingness and based on the ability of the returns we've generated to share that. So I think that's important. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. I'll tell her. I guess you mentioned, you know, capital return in this year, and that, I think that was well received. Just maybe expand upon how you're thinking about cap our priorities looking out. Yeah, I think, first of all, very mathematically, when the share trades, as it does at half of book, you know, buybacks, capital return, more generally, is one of the most valuable things you can do. If you look at us in the last 2.5 years, including dividends and buybacks, we've returned about 25% of our market cap. If you look at us in the last couple of years, my calculation's right, we've done about 13% of our shares have been bought back. So, you know, these are numbers where the mathematics will ultimately work. And so that's a very important thing for us. And we've spoken about one claim on... You know, the bank works, the bank generates profits, and there's a claim on the profits. The claim on the profits can come from certain regulatory items. We've spoken a little about that. We are in the Basel Endgame. You know, I think it was mentioned here that that Basel Endgame was 10 years long. Yesterday, somebody mentioned it, but, you know, I think we are near the end of the Basel Endgame. Second thing is that, so you, there's greater clarity on that. The second thing is, we spoke a little about investment, the things that are important to us, and then there's capital return, which is, you know, as important as any of the others, and in fact, higher in importance because it places a hurdle, a minimum requirement hurdle on other things where you might spend your money. I guess it's interesting, as you look at the audience response, it seems to be, you know, evenly distributed. You know, you just talked about, you talked about capital distributions, you know, you talked about wanting to drive a, you know, sustainable rinse, repeat, ROTCE. I mean, how, I guess, do you feel about, you know, the business mix, you know, as it stands today? So I like the business mix. I think that we are in businesses which we operate and run well, and we operate and run in a predictable manner. It's clear that in the marketplace, some aspects of our businesses attract a higher valuation multiple than others. So for instance, you know, U.K. retail banks or monoline retail banks trade at a higher multiple than Barclays does. And so we've got to assume that's true of our monoline retail business, which is as good as any of them. So what we've got to do, as we think about the mix over time, is maintain the strength and stability and presence of our investment bank, which is a built-out entity. You know, we're not looking to do anything, you know, much more than run it extremely well and continue to emphasize and grow, as I said, capital light fee businesses, which would have a higher ROTE valuation. So that over time, the proportion of the bank changes, so that a greater portion of our revenue comes from capital light fee-related businesses. Let me put up the next ARS question. How do you see Barclays business on capital and capital returns? And I guess, Venkat, I guess you addressed this in your prior, you know, comments on capital returns. Yeah. But I guess, you know, just given where you are on capital and stock trading at half the tangible book, is there an ability to do more? Well, what we do is very, very carefully balanced among the three things we said, which is investment, making allowances for what regulatory matters might come ahead, and we are towards the end of the Basel end game, and then prioritizing capital returns. We completely get the importance of it, the effects it has on sentiment, and quite mathematically, the effects it has on the enterprise. Got it. And then in the second quarter, you know, just looking at the markets businesses, you know, tough year-over-year comps, lower volatility in markets impacted results as well along with others. You know, what kind of gives you comfort your investments in the franchise are paying off, and, you know, maybe just some color you'd provide on the current environment? So I'm very, very proud and pleased with our markets business. It's... If you look at it year on year on year, we continue to gain market share. We continue to be more meaningful to our clients. You know, one of the things which we measure is of our top 100 clients, with what fraction of them are we in the top five? So overall, we're a sixth-ranked bank, but with what fraction of our top 100 clients are we in the top five? And that number has gone up by about 20% in 2 years, right? So I think it's around 40% now. That is the one thing we talk about it in our earnings. And to look at that and to see continued growth is an indication of market share. The second thing that I look at is whether the places where we are making investments, we've seen growth. We've seen that absolutely in our prime business, and we've seen it everywhere. But I pick up the prime and the financing business as one simple example of it, where we've seen 9% growth year-on-year. We spoke about that as well. And the way you've got to think about that is this is a place where funds work with us to manage their cash, to clear their trades, to help them with their futures clearing, and to help them borrow stocks, and to finance fixed income instruments. Right? So we act in effect, like their bank, helping them operate all of these things. If you do well, provide great service, and manage your risk carefully and well, this can be a fantastic business. That's what we try to do, that's what our clients trust us to do, and we continue to gain market share and gain clients among the most prominent investors across the world, frankly. So in the markets business, those are two important things, and they all sit side by side. We run a trading and facilitation business. We've always been known for our excellence in fixed income, which continues. We're building out in equities, and we continue to do well in equities, including Prime, hired senior leadership into equities recently, and securitized products. The trading goes hand in hand with the financing, and the global reach into the largest investor clients in the world. I'm gonna... I have one more kind of question written down, so there's questions in the audience, start to get them ready. And Venkat, you touched on this earlier, so I thought maybe I could expand on that. You know, you mentioned the investment banking pipelines, you know, obviously last quarter, last few quarters have been depressed, kind of revenues across the street. You kind of touched on green shoots. Maybe expand that in terms of what you're seeing, what you're hearing from clients. Yeah, I was asked yesterday on TV, do I see the green shoots? And I responded, "I'm smelling them. Mm-hmm. You know, Anna is a great gardener, so she told me that's the appropriate order of things. In my mind, activity is dependent on three things. First of all, there's the debt capital markets, and on the debt capital markets, it's a bit of a machine. You know, securities mature, they need to be refinancing. There's a little bit of timing of interest rates. There's a little bit of people finding windows where there's investment appetite. You saw a bit of it starting earlier this month, where we were prominent in many large DCM trades on the day after Labor Day and the, you know, the day, the two days after Labor Day. So that's a timing issue. Mergers, buyouts, and equity capital markets are less time dependent and more, and less dependent by a process, on a process, but more dependent on people feeling that a few set of circumstances have come together. One is that the economy and the market has stabilized in a manner such that you can understand the business model of a company, and the business model is not going through change. The second is that there's availability of cash, and there is cash. The third is that asset prices have fallen to a value that people believe are attractive. I think in financial assets, you've seen a correction over 18-24 months, and we may be getting to that point. And the fourth thing is that banks or other institutions are ready, willing, and able to lend, and the lending, you know, for at a length and in the type of terms that an investor needs to make in a good aggregate return, which may be falling into place. So those... The first one, economic stabilization, seems to be falling into place. Cash there is. The ability for people to assess whether asset prices have corrected seems to be falling into place. And then the last one is bank lending, and lending terms seems to be falling into place. So what we've got to test now in the next few months is whether that coming together produces some deals... you know, we think there's activity under the surface, the ducks are paddling furiously, and we'll just see over the next few months how much they move. Any questions from the audience? Okay, let's see. I guess, Bank, as the audience kind of thinks of things. There's one there. Oh, there's one. Thanks very much for your comments. I wonder if you could comment a bit further on the current state of coordination between the U.S. and U.K., European regulators, in terms of having broadly similar standards so that you don't have to work to the highest common denominator, and current coordination versus what you've seen in the past. Appreciate your time. A little during the spring, certainly in Switzerland. So I think the coordination is high. I think the coordination is by and large, fairly efficient. You know, they try as best as they can to implement one common set of Basel standards. We may or may not like the standards, but they try to keep them common. And then they try to do a little bit of managing of the trends and standards for the local banking environment, which they have. So I think in the U.S., for instance, there's obviously a lot of emphasis on market risk because of the large markets banks that there are. There's some emphasis on credit and operational risk as well. Operational risk is getting a little more emphasis these days. Interest rate risk in the banking book was something that the U.S., in the past, emphasized a little less than the Europeans did. I think the events of this spring would have changed that, as far as, you know, the broad banking community goes. In the U.K., in Europe, I think they focused a lot on credit risk, because that is actually the biggest risk in their banking system. They don't have many banks which are deeply involved in the financial... in the trading businesses, and with few exceptions, of course. The U.K. is somewhere in between. The U.K. tries to balance both because it has a jurisdiction over foreign banks in London. London is a financial center, as well as the important U.K. banks, and a few of them are global. You know, we are global in the investment banking markets, and there are a couple others who are global, more in commercial and retail and wealth management across Asia. So I think you, you will continue to see a fairly close level of coordination and harmonization as best as you can get it. It will never be perfectly harmonized. And then there will be different rules in each jurisdiction, but they are also aligning about the ring fencing of activity, about, you know, double leverage, about solvency regimes, you know, do you double count capital or not? Those will be always tailored to the local jurisdictions. Would you add anything, Anna? I think the only thing I would add is that, you know, it's great to have all three sets of Basel rules now, now that we've got the European and U.K. and U.S. rules. We, of course, as Barclays, because we operate in the way we do, we will be subject to all three. But, you know, we and the other banks have got a good track record of being able to manage our way through regulatory change, and actually, this time should be no different. You've mentioned about CIB market share gains. Can you quantify that for us, in what areas are you gaining market share? So in aggregate, over a longer period, we've gained market share across the board in the CIB. So in markets, it's been in fixed income and in equities, and especially in financing and prime. And in banking, we've always been very strong in DCM, and the gains have been in equity capital markets and a little bit on M&A. So quarter to quarter, those things will jump up and down. Quarter to quarter, they'll jump up and down, in part because of, you know, in the investment banking side, merger activity is large and episodic. If you're in, you're in, if you're out, you're out. And in trading, it plays a little to your style. So for instance, we don't have a commodities business. Sometimes that will affect us. We don't have a strong emerging markets business locally. We do emerging markets, but we do it in hard currency, primarily out of London and New York. I mean, we have operations in India and Singapore, but it's a largely London, New York business. So if local emerging markets do well in one quarter, you'll see us fall back a bit. And sometimes you will see, you know, Asian equities, where again, we are not as prominent. If they have a bad quarter, we'll do well. If they have a good quarter, we won't. So things go up and down, but the thing I would ask you to look at is overall ranking, which is stable to increasing. Share with the top 100 clients, that where are we in the top five, which is increasing. Those things that we point out, and you know, the growth of our prime business, which we talk about. Look at those things, and they are increasing. So just a quick question on sort of macroeconomic events. If you end up with a you know an event that causes oil and natural gas prices to spike again, and you have that coupled with a cold winter, given the U.K.'s dependency on LNG spot prices, what do you think—how are you guys modeling the impact? ... on the UK economy for that kind of perfect storm? And what do you think the likelihood would be that, you know, the government, as messy as it is right now, could come together and provide some sort of, you know, safety net so that it doesn't cause the wheels to sort of start coming off in the winter and spring? Do you want to start, and I'll add? Yeah. Let me start, and I'll add. So we obviously stress test our portfolios, and we set up, you know, our portfolio exposures based on assumptions of how it could perform if certain things go bad, happen in an extreme way. Now, we may not imagine every scenario, we may not imagine that scenario, but we've certainly the primary impact of that scenario is a stress on our consumer business and an ability of people to pay their consumer debt. We've been very cautious, as we've said to you, on unsecured consumer debt. You know, our balances in our U.S., U.K. cards portfolio are down about 40% since pre-COVID levels. Now, it's down a little more than I'd like, and I'd like to grow that business because I'm generally bullish on U.K. credit right now, consumer credit right now. We'd like to grow that business, but having said that, our exposures are limited. Then when we stress our portfolio, we're not making any assumptions of government support. If that happens, so be it, and great. We took a cautious view on consumer lending post-Brexit and at the start of COVID, not assuming government support, right? I do think that's the right thing to do because you can never say how government support will come to individuals and corporates. It came, and it came in good measure, and you could argue that we took too conservative a stance, but I'm always happy to take that conservative stance. Because go back to what we said at the very beginning, we want you to know the factors that drive this bank's income and show to you that when the outside world changes, our own portfolio and our own income changes in the way you would expect and the amount it would expect, right? So we don't make huge assumptions about those things. So we try to run a robust portfolio, which will perform, you know, through changes in the environment. Anna? Yeah. I think the other thing I'd say is the factor that really generates sharp changes in our asset quality is actually unemployment. Unemployment in the UK remains low. It's pretty stable, despite perhaps a tick up today. And in the modeling that we do, we do forecast an increase in that unemployment. But absent that, our customers are behaving in quite an interesting way, actually. They are cautious but very confident. So they're cautious in that they continue to deleverage their own positions. So about actually more than a quarter of our customers right now are overpaying on their mortgages, which, given the interest rate environment, is quite an incredible thing. But it tells you how they're feeling about their environment. So they are being super cautious. We are clearly seeing the impact of that on our net interest margin, but we're seeing the benefit in impairments, and I think it really would benefit us in the kind of environment that you've just described, simply because the customer is clearly a bit cautious about what might happen over the next few months. So, you know, we're happy with the way they're behaving. As Venkat said, we stress their performance through a number of different macro scenarios. But when we look at their micro behavior, their micro behavior shows us that they're being very defensive, which, given the uncertainty that we have, is good news. Right there. Thanks. Hi. I appreciate your comments on prioritizing capital returns, but with your stock trading at about 0.5 times book and you generating an ROE in the low double digits, it would imply that buying back your stock would produce a return on that investment in the mid-20s, let's say. So why wouldn't you make a firm commitment to the market that essentially you're not gonna invest incremental capital into capital-intensive businesses and instead put all of that into buying back your own stock until it reflects something closer to what you deem fair value? Let me start. I think in many of the conversations I've had with investors, and Anna has had in the last couple of days, we've been very clear that some of our financial targets and our guidance needs a bit of a revision. You know, we've said above 10% on ROTE. We've said that we prioritize capital returns, but we've not given hard and fast numbers. It is something we're working on, and it's something we agree with you. It's a desirable thing to do. Thanks. Maybe I could follow up. You know, you talked a little bit about the US card franchise and mentioned the new Xbox card, but just maybe more broadly, just because it's a question I get asked about covering kind of the larger US issuers, being the big banks or the monoline, just, you know, what, you know, how does Barclays compete against some, maybe some of those bigger US players, and kind of what differentiates you in the marketplace, and kind of what are you looking to achieve there? So it's a business we've been in for a long time. We're really good at it, and we're very focused on partnerships. And so for us, the way we think about this business is, it's got 20 million retail customers, but there's really only 20 clients.... And those clients are very large institutions with whom we have broader banking relationships. And what we're really doing in this business is we're providing another product for them, which is actually a way for their customers to finance their lifestyle. So that's how we think about it. It's an extension of the business that we have. Actually, what's really unique about us versus our U.S. peers is we don't have a competing card. So we don't compete in the wallet. You know, the partners that we work with really value that, so they value the customer service and the operational excellence that we have, but also the fact that we've chosen to partner with them, and we're not competing with them. So we think that marks us out, actually. We grew the business extremely well across the sort of travel and entertainment portfolio. Last year, we took our first steps really into retail with Gap. And that's really sort of doubled the addressable waterfront of that business for us. But we're really disciplined because it is a competitive business in the U.S. And in the past, where we found that we haven't got the right returns from our partner, we've walked away from the relationship. But anything you'd add? Yeah, I mean, we've acquired a new demographic, wholesale, you know, travel and leisure, retail, gamer. Yeah. Any other questions from the audience? There's one down there. As an example, potentially of the conservatism with which you're running the consumer business. I'm not as familiar with Barclays, but I obviously am more interested after this lunch. I think it's been great. I'd be curious what your reserves are against credit card, as a for instance, or consumer loans, to the extent you disclose it. Yes, we do. We do disclose it. And we can, we can help you. I'm gonna send one of my investor relations colleagues to your side of the room very quickly with a, with a nice pack of information. But we do disclose our coverage levels across U.S. cards, and you'll see that they show up really well, actually, against our peer set. They're around 8% overall. And the way we do impairment in the U.K. is a little bit different versus CECL, but we can talk you through that. But essentially, for our, for our cards book overall, it's, it's around 8%, and I think very typical for, for our U.S. peers. Within that, it'll vary by partner, actually. We're really focused on risk-adjusted returns, so I might expect the retail portfolio to be a little bit higher than that. But of course, we're getting a higher margin on that business, too. But we'll come and find you and share it with you. Perfect. Thank you. If anybody else is part of that 38% who don't own our stock, but is in this room, we'll send you that package. Any final questions for Venkat and Anna? If not, please join me in thanking them for their time today. Thank you.