RBC Financial Institutions Conference. Thank you for all of you attending. Really, Jane doesn't really need much of an introduction. She's obviously chairman of the board and Chief Executive Officer at Citigroup. This is her fifth year as CEO at Citigroup, and I was doing some number checking, and the stock is up 53% under her tenure versus the bank index, which is up 31%. You're outperforming the index w hich is great. It's getting going, though. Which is the most important part. As you may know, the market cap of Citigroup's about $187 billion, and it's truly one of our big global banks in the United States. We're gonna have some questions during the fireside chat. Jane, maybe we could start off with, given Citi's broad and deep global reach, can you talk to us about the dynamics that you're seeing around the world right now, and what are you hearing from your corporate and investor clients, and any thoughts on the consumer sentiment activity that's going on? It's quite a lot in there. I kick off just by the underlying economy is doing just fine around the world. Activity is good. Business momentum is good. The consumer spending was up about 5% in February here in the States. We're seeing a pretty fiscally responsible consumer as well, which is probably where some of the sentiment is translated into some more mindfulness in it. The balance sheets are in pretty decent health. On the corporate side, I think particularly here in the States, corporate is very much on the front foot. You're seeing, you know, strong investment both in AI as well as into general automation and technology investment that's going on. Pretty vibrant M&A market, LinkedIn as well, companies are looking at consolidation and opportunities, really to move momentum forward. I think particularly given everything going on in the Middle East, most relevantly, balance sheets are probably the strongest I've seen in my tenure, and they haven't been weak during that tenure. Again, corporate's in good shape. We've also got some other positive drivers that are coming through. Deregulation is making a difference. We're seeing things getting done faster, more confidence out there. Then we've also gonna have the tax bill benefit that's coming through. The underlying side, particularly in the States, in good shape. I'm just back from Europe. Germany definitely feeling much more positive about their outlooks, and Europe generally feeling this year will be better than last year. The big wild card is obviously the Middle East. When we look at the big question really is the duration and the containability, if that's a word, of particularly what's going on in the Straits. We don't know the answer on that one. If I look at, I was chatting with our economist yesterday, and his view, which I think is the right one from what we're seeing, is if the oil price is over 100 for the next four to six weeks, say it comes down to about the 85 mark for the second quarter and then below 70, which is sort of more in line where inventories of the things are in the second half of the year, that probably shaves 15 basis points, 15, off global GDP growth. Part of that is there's a lot of physical inventory out there, still. Now, if it's longer than that in terms of above $100 oil price for a longer period, then you're looking at a very different scenario, you know, that has ramifications for inflation. I think the central banks have a tough job at the moment. They're all set globally for bringing rates down, they're in a wait-and-see mode at the moment. They will be in suspense for a little bit, I suspect. They've got the tougher job, and particularly here in the States, because the labor market is, the supply side is not a challenge, but we've all seen a clear softening on the demand side. I think the central bank, the Fed's gonna have a tougher job between the balance of if inflation is picking up because of the oil price and you've got the labor market on the other side, where do they land? If you know, despite everything, corporate activity very strong at the moment. Large cap M&A is not missing a beat right now. Where we see a bit more of a pause is, say, middle market, private equity. Equity capital markets, IPOs, the best names are, you know, continuing forward. I think probably gonna be a little bit more selective with some of the smaller IPOs as to which ones will be able to come or not, but in the larger space, not. The credit markets have been very constructive. If anything, right now they've been more focused on AI than they have on the oil price. Obviously for investors, I think the equities guys, we're better positioned in the equity markets. We've seen a few of the hedge funds with some pretty hefty losses on the rates front, but not for everyone across the board and, commodities we all know about. You know, you put it all together, the other noises we see in the markets around private credit. What I'd say there is, we do need to just get some facts on the table. Private credit's a $1.7 trillion market. We just wiped $1 trillion off crypto and no one missed a beat. The retail investors are not major investors in the space yet. It's not a levered part of the market. It's 1-1.2 leverage in there. I'm more sanguine on private credit. There'll be some idiosyncratic risk in there from folks who don't have good credit standards, but I don't think it's a systemic issue. It gets a little more concerning if the Middle East crisis goes on for a long time and you see a convergence of the concerns on AI valuations on the disruption risk into business models from AI. We're seeing it obviously with SaaS software, some of the business services and private credit all coming together and converging, that would be more problematic. That's what we're keeping an eye on. No. Okay Very insightful. I appreciate that. Can we follow up on the regulatory? Yeah ... comment? Obviously, we have these stress capital buffers and CCAR coming up- Yes Very shortly. Yeah. Can you talk about what you're thinking in that standpoint from what the regulators, you know, recalibration, but also in terms of how do you look at it from a capital perspective? Yeah as well? Well, I think we're gonna know a lot more in about two weeks. That's what we're hearing the timeframe for getting the proposal through, as it comes out of the FDIC, the Fed, and the OCC, on Basel III and GSIB. I think we'll know as it were the worst case as it were on capital, and I think we're all optimistic, but let's wait. It's two weeks. It's not long. We'll get a better sense around it. And then SCB. Well, it's always frustrating when you're expecting your SCB to come down, that you have to wait a year. I would much rather, and I think all the bank CEOs would say the same thing, we would much rather have the right models developed, and then have that giving the market and ourselves much more certainty around the stress capital buffer system for multiple years, than have a pillar system or some other approach that was more of a band-aid. I think getting accurate and better models will certainly from Citi's point of view be very beneficial in bringing the SCB to be an accurate reflection of our risk, and our risk is coming down. The other piece is it's good to see the focus on material financial risk. I mean, from the supervisory side, the last 15 years, they've not been banal, but they have been benign. I think, you know, thinking that it's going to continue being benign for the next few years is probably a tad optimistic. Having a supervisory focus much more on material financial risks is very important for the next few years. I think it's from an investor point of view, you want the supervisors focused on what is important for the future, safety and soundness and not on things that are not. I'm optimistic about our capital because I see the risk of our bank materially different from what it used to be way back when, and I look forward to our SCB reflecting that. That is very good. Yeah, no, we're all very anxious to see the proposal when it comes out. Yeah ... from Washington later this month, and that's good. Maybe shifting over to the first quarter. You touched a- Yeah ... little bit about the market conditions. Can we dive into what you're seeing in the overall growth in investment? Yeah ... banking this quarter as well as markets? Anything else you'd like to call out into the quarter or ahead of the Investor Day in May? It's always lovely being asked that question with a few more weeks to be left in the quarter when you've got an uncertainty in the Middle East going on. With the appropriate caveat of let's see how the events unfold, I'd say for the first two months and a bit of the quarter, it's been good activity. Our perspective as we sit here right now is when I think about investment banking fees, we're expecting mid-teens growth in fees for the quarter year-over-year, and that's really been M&A, as I talked about before, and ECM that are the big drivers. Same guidance for markets. Our markets business, we're expecting mid-teens as well year-over-year. And that's been both strength in equities and fixed income. Obviously, that can change in 2.5 weeks but I feel pretty good with that where we sit right now. In terms of where we're looking at overall, you know, we will be expecting, as I talked about at the last earnings call, around about 60% operating efficiency for the full year. You can expect us to be front loading some of the severance expenses and other elements in the first quarter, just because, obviously, that is better for our shareholders and for ourselves when we do that. You'll get the benefit in the first quarter earnings of seeing the retail bank sitting into wealth and then the clarity of what our cards franchise looks like. I hope that will make everyone, even though you have to change some of the models around it, will make it much easier to forecast some of the pieces going forward. Short-term pain for long-term gain. The Investor Day is obviously coming up in May. I can't wait. Yeah. Honestly, I can't wait. We're looking forward to that because I think you'll see the confidence we've got in the 10%-11% ROTCE for this year, with a lot of good tailwinds behind us. We've really tested a lot of different macro environments. I think all banks have had to in the last few years to make sure the model's pretty resilient under different scenarios and good diversity of businesses there. We'll be looking forward to laying out the path from here. Great. Yeah. You touched on the 10%-11% ROTCE. Yeah. You feeling confident on that? What, and what are the drivers that you see and efficiencies to get to that number? Yes. I feel good about that. I think we all do. Gonzalo's sitting here in the audience with me. He's been looking at everything with a good fresh pair of eyes as well. You know, if we unpick it on the revenue side, I think you've seen us with sort of 7% revenue growth the last few years, despite the various challenges in the environment. You look at the NII numbers. I'm looking forward to the rest of the year expecting to see some good deposit growth. We've had benefit of a flight to quality of late, but we're just expecting to see good growth in NII from volumes. We also see the benefit in mix, as well as seeing some of the investments we have in Treasury getting reinvested, and that provides a very, very good offset to a potentially declining rate environment. The timing of that's TBD. Good growth on NII ex-markets. Similarly, NIR, feel good on the growth there. We'll see it from services, we'll see it in wealth and banking. Markets, I find it very hard to predict exactly what markets revenues are going to be over the course of a year when you sit here in March, so I shall decline to comment on that one. On the operating efficiency and expense side, as I said, the expenses, we'll be looking at around a 60% number for operating efficiency. As you go beneath that, you'll see both productivity savings as well as investments. The different components on the expense base, we've got productivity benefits from investments that we've been making. We'll have the transformation costs as I mentioned in the last earnings call, over 80% of the programs are at the target state that we've laid out. That enables us to bring the cost base down associated with that. You'll see that in headcount and expenses starting in this quarter. We've also got stranded costs, you know, with Russia getting closed, China's done, you know, Mexico, other pieces getting into a strong position that enables bring stranded costs down. Then the benefits, the investments we made in transformation and others translating into productivity. On the severance side, I'm expecting to be a little bit lower than last year, but as I say, we're really front-loading that into the quarter. Then on capital, we continue with the discipline, and we love giving capital back to the shareholders if we don't see the opportunity to deploy it at high returns internally. A bit very much the same. Yes As you've seen from Citi over the last few years. I think there's been a consistency, revenue growth, positive operating leverage, capital discipline, improving returns, and investing in the businesses for the long-term growth at the same time as driving the productivity improvement. I hope this year is just continues on nicely as more of the same. There you go. You touched a little bit on the wealth and the retail bank coming together. Yeah. Maybe you've had some real momentum and success. Yeah in that area. Yeah. Can you talk to us about the drivers of what? Yeah ... you see going forward? Also, what are the synergies that you're looking for when now that the retail bank is included in the- Yeah Management area? Andy's been doing a super job. I think what we've been doing most of late, you know, we've put a lot of it in the first couple of years he was in, was getting the platforms put together, getting the synergies in. You saw a lot of the cost benefits coming through. The focus at the moment, we've been continuing to attract really excellent talent, as well as retaining some of the. We've got some fabulous talent in different parts of the business and the world. We've been doing a lot of work on the CIO capabilities and product. Kate Moore and the team have got a fantastic set of capabilities and proposition now. We've also been put a lot of work into the investment platform. Keith Glenfield and the team there have been making sure that we've got a platform agnostic platform and offerings. We're not pushing our own product. We're very much agnostic as to where it comes from. I think that's a competitive advantage, building out in alternatives and the core investment offering. We've got some fantastic partners BlackRock, iCapital, Palantir, looking at how can we disrupt, how can we improve client experience, and how can we also leverage our partners' scale. You'll continue to see us very focused on quality NNIA, on investment growth in the investment platform to drive our returns, but also good discipline in the balance sheet and getting returns there. I feel good about that. Good timing for putting the retail bank and wealth together, seeing retail bank had obviously been a drag in the USPB franchise. It's had very good revenue growth in the low to mid-20s, as you saw in the recent numbers. Wealth had strong growth and revenue momentum and underlying momentum. We'll put them together. It changes the ROTCE as you'll see, but it doesn't change our expectation to continue growing the ROTCE in line with the targets that we laid out. The synergies are just so obvious. There's a real value of having the deposit franchise together in one. I think that's another area you'll see as investors the benefit of seeing what does the full U.S. deposit franchise look like without having to flip through supplements and other things. The heart of it is our retail bank's in the six markets, where a lot of the wealth is in the States. It's about 35% of the high net worth households are in the six markets that we've got the strongholds in. That ability to have a pretty seamless client experience all the way up the client elevator is an obvious one, and we could see it when we had USPB and the wealth franchise with the referrals going across, that we have $3 trillion of assets in the U.S. with us with clients with an existing relationship where we're their operating account for the day-to-day finances, and we've been that forever. We're highly confident, particularly given the investments in client experience, the platform work we're doing with Palantir and others, that we will be providing a very modern and highly appealing wealth proposition into that retail bank client base. Right. I think you can tell I'm excited by this one. Yep. Yeah. Very interesting. Yeah The other big part, of course, of Citigroup on the consumer side is cards. Yes. Now can you talk to us about the franchise? Yeah. It's shifted as a standalone. Yes. How are you going to look what are you looking for in terms of the drivers there? Yeah now that it's a standalone business? Yeah. You'll hear a lot from Pam at Investor Day about this as you obviously will from all five of the business heads. What Pam, what we're seeing is we're the number three franchise in the States. We've been investing a lot in terms of our product platforms. You've seen us launching the different Strata so that we're filling in with the premium customers. It so beat my expectations. I think the team low-balled the numbers when they showed them to me the first time because the growth has really been strong there. We've also been seeing a lot of strong momentum behind loyalty and engagement that we've been investing behind. We've got American Airlines coming on board, so that's had a lot of attention in terms of building out the proposition on the rewards side, in terms of the lounges, and a really spectacular growth in client acquisition on that front. Also very happy where the Costco relationship has been going as well, which has been a big and important one. We've been focused on driving up the returns. On the cards side, I think what we've seen is consumers now prefer a general purpose card over the closed loop system. You'll see us in terms of our growth focusing more on the co-brand relationship, and even some conversions of existing ones into co-brands, as well as the proprietary cards for the growth going forward. I'm excited about what we're going to be doing, and AI is also an area we'll talk quite a bit about that at Investor Day because that's also providing all sorts of new possibilities. On the credit cards, from time to time, portfolios come up. Yep for potential bidding or sales. Yep. Are there any on the horizon that you're aware of that Citi may have an opportunity to look at? I'm not gonna let our competitors know about that one. We're very clear both with existing ones when they're coming up for renewal, as well as other opportunities. It's laser focused on the returns. If something's not cutting it on the returns, in the renewal, we won't be pursuing them, or we'll be looking at a very different set of economics. The same again for new situations that come up. The Barclays portfolio that we're taking over, for example, next month, the economics are all ones that our shareholders will be would say is appropriate. One, because of all the different changes as recently as from January, there was talk about that 10% limit, and you were very clear on your earnings call how you felt about it. But we haven't heard anything. Is it kind of past us now, or is that still something that's- Look, I think the president is rightly focused on affordability. Yep. Right? We have a very broad array of different offerings for our customer base that play into that, not only in cards, but also the retail bank and the like. As do many of our peers as well. I think we've been very clear that this is not the way to solve affordability. This is the way to crush access to credit for anyone other than the wealthy, and I don't think that's what the president would like. I hope, I think Congress understands that. Yes. Coming back to the returns. Yeah the 10%-11% ROTCE, what are you most focused on to ensure that it's higher returns are sustainable? Yeah over time? Yeah. This is what you'll hear from us a lot at Investor Day, I think, why we're excited just to help you see the continuity of the strategy, but where does it take us to next? There's a lot of tailwinds from the investments that we've made over the last few years, so that really does help us with momentum, you know, in the next two years and then beyond. We will be continuing to invest in acquiring new clients, deepening with existing client relationships in the product capabilities. AI is obviously another area where investments are driving greater productivity. They're driving opportunities in revenue. They're driving opportunities in service, and we're extremely active in that front, particularly with the new raft of models that have come out, and we've. I've talked a bit about that before. What you'll hear in Investor Day will be, you know, where are we looking at the investments that will help drive the revenue growth by each of the different businesses? You'll see in Services where we're making investments in the product innovations that we've been talking about, new ones in Markets, Prime Finance as an example in the financing space and the technology investments behind that. You'll be hearing in Banking about some more of the talent growth that we'll be investing behind. We'll lay all of this out. We're not short of growth opportunities, and we're also, because of all the work we've done, able to bring the firm together and have much more of a One Citi approach to clients, and the client coverage improvements is really helping drive the wallet share capture going forward. We'll lay it out. We'll lay out where we see the expense opportunities continuing to invest, but particularly as transformation, stranded costs, other elements come through, that will be a benefit, for continuing improving our operating efficiency and operating leverage. I think we have the best corporate loan portfolio on the Street. That's our belief. We have some good proof points behind that. We are a source of resiliency for our clients. We see at the moment Middle East, that's operating resiliency for them as they sort out supply chains, operating resiliency because our infrastructure is modernized and strong, and then unquestionable financial resiliency for our clients in terms of our capital liquidity and whenever there's a port in the storm needed, we see the flight to us in moments like this. On the capital front, you know, continued to making sure capital's investing in high return opportunities, things commoditize moving from that, and then return of capital to our shareholders. We'll also get the benefit of the back end of final stranded costs coming down, transformation expenses coming down, DTA getting used up here in the States. It's a pretty logical path to the next set of returns in the next couple of years, and then towards returns that are firmly in the respectable category beyond, and the team's on a mission. No, that's great. We'll get it done. Yep. We're running out of time, so the final question, can you share with us we touched on this is your fifth year as CEO at Citi, the progress that you've made over this period. Finally, what are the key messages that you'd like investors to take away from today? Yeah. I mean, I think we really put the foundations in place over the last few years for what Citi is for going forward, and you can feel the positive momentum behind that. Clarity of the strategy, five interconnected businesses in which we have the right to win, and we are advancing in terms of our market share, wallet position and others in all of those businesses and getting the synergies and connectivity from them. At the same time, really good progress on the divestitures. We've either got sales agreed or completed on 13, and as you saw from the announcement a couple of weeks ago, much further ahead with Banamex than I think anyone would have thought, so it will be down to 51% when the latest tranche of investments closes before too long. It's a clearer Citi. We've also as an organization of the org simplification, you've got a flatter, simpler, better connected firm, faster decision-making, much easier to connect the pieces to deliver One Citi to a client, with a focus and accountability within the organization to do that. That transparency and accountability from the org side was a really important piece. Transformation in good shape, as you've heard, but also importantly, driving some of the benefits that we'll get from the investments in transformation translating now into efficiencies. We have modernized the firm, the infrastructure of the firm. We have a fantastic leadership team in place that really works as a team. You put all of that together, we got a lot done in a relatively short period of time, translate into results in terms of the revenue growth, positive operating leverage, improvement in returns, improvement in the position of each of the businesses. I am looking forward to the next five years as we manage the firm with a much simpler and better Citi. Our competitors better watch out, and our investors should just enjoy the upside because we're still cheap. With that, please join me in a round of applause thanking Jane for joining us today.