 Hi everyone, welcome to our panel, where we're going to talk about one of the critical and pressing issues facing the global economy, Brexit and the impact on Europe. So just to bring everyone up to speed on the timeline, next week, January 31st, the EU will lose for the first time ever one of its members from 28 to 27 with the UK leaving second biggest economy. And we have a pretty diverse as diverse as it gets to Germans and to Italians to talk about what it's all going to mean for Europe. The 11th month shot clock starts and they have to figure out some sort of trade deal between Europe and the UK. And so today we're going to talk about that and what it's all going to mean. I'd like to introduce our very esteemed panelists here. We've got Paulo Gentiloni. He is the former Prime Minister of Italy. He's currently the commissioner for the economy at the European Commission. Welcome to you. We've got Frank Apple. He is the CEO of Deutsche Post, DHL. We've got Christian Saving. He's the CEO of Deutsche Bank. And we've got Roberto Gualtieri, the Minister of the Economy and Finance in Italy. So thank you all for joining the discussion. And I always prefer in the round because it's a lot more fun and we'll have a lot more debate. I'd like to kick it off with you, Commissioner. As far as Europe's concerned, what are going to be the key priorities in negotiating this very complex deal over the next year for Britain to leave as far as it relates to the economy and trade? Yes. I would say first to try to give certainty on to the process. I think in the last couple of years we had, we were rather uncertain on the outcome. Now the outcome is certain. We don't like it, but it is there. UK will leave the union at the end of the month. We have a very short time for negotiation. 11 months for a free trade agreement is really very short if we look to other free trade agreements. But the European Union is ready to do all, is in our power to have the more, the best possible relation with UK. I would say that most of the results depend on the decision of the UK government to tell it in another way. If the UK government wants to have very large access to the single market, if they want to have very good relation with the single market, we are ready to do this. But it is not to us to decide. We have our rules. We expect a level playing field from this agreement. If there is an availability from the UK government, I think we will reach a good agreement. It is not easy in 11 months, but I think it is still possible. We can't have zero tariffs and dumping together. We can have zero tariffs and zero dumping. So we need an agreement with a level playing field between us, among us. What do you think Minister Gwaltieri is the most important aspect as far as Italy is concerned in these negotiations? And what do you think are going to be the biggest sticking points? I think it is the balance between the deepness of the free trade agreement, its comprehensiveness and also the capacity to ensure a level playing field. Because at the end of the day, a deeper comprehensive free trade agreement is not a single market. Equivalence is not but supported. There are different things. So we first want a deal which is as much as possible, deep and comprehensive. But we know that an FTA is not a single market. So there will be in any case change. There will be differences. So first, it is important not to lose time, because if the UK, as they have said, is not going to use the option to prolong the transition, they already told us that. We have really short time. So we need to move quickly to define the principles, to focus on the most important things. It seems to be an FTA focus on goods. Zero quota, zero tariffs is the magic formula and level playing field because you need this internal and external security. And that would be what can be realistically done. And that will hopefully minimize at maximum the disruption. And we will have change there. We have supply chains integrated on goods, industrial production. So that's not a minor thing. So we want, of course, to minimize this as much as possible and on the financial markets as much as possible. We will make an intelligent use of equivalence. But it is not the same that single market. So Europe, if on the one hand has to negotiate in good faith with the UK, a good agreement, that's also to prepare itself for a change which will be especially in the medium term, deep. And so that means our agenda on capital market union and banking union on how to relaunch growth, on how to deepen our single market. So it is an ambitious agenda that we have to relaunch with even more determination because of Brexit. How hard are your lives planning for all of this with the uncertainty out there and the fact that we don't know if there's going to be a deal. We don't know what's going to be in the deal. This uncertainty has now been dragged out for years. How do you make it work for business? So maybe first of all, the Brexit has never been a good idea and still not a good idea. And what has happened so far is just that it's off the top lines of the news, which is good news actually, because that gives the UK and the European Union the chance to negotiate without constant public pressure what's going on. That's what has happened so far. We still have the opportunity that there's a hard Brexit, because the hard Brexit would mean that we don't get an agreement and then the UK will be treated as a WTO country. And that is because the WTO says that we can't have a preferred deal for the UK. And that is still the risk. It will be not as bad as people might think either. So we are preparing for ourselves for a long time, also for a hard Brexit. It's less likely, but we are well prepared to help our customers. How do you prepare? You know, of course, you are looking into contingency planning. You are looking into driver's licensees for extra people for customs clearance, for extra space, all that we have done already. So it costs us more money that it takes no longer. But we are still hoping that we get to an agreement. But it's not off the table yet. What is good is it's off the table of the daily news. Like you see, you know, this is probably one of a few sessions we talked about the Brexit, which is good news and not bad news. I was thinking it was refreshing to take a breath from the other side. Yeah, I think it's good. You know, the EU and the UK need some time now to come to a conclusion. It's a very tight timeframe. If a hard Brexit still happens, it will be not as bad. But again, it's not a good idea in the first place. It will not be good for the UK nor for Europe, in any case. But you know, the citizens have chosen their way and now we have to execute that somehow. How do you think about the different outcomes and how do you plan? Well, we have planned. I mean, we would be a bad institution if we wouldn't have planned for the outcome already last March. So I think the financial markets already gave the response. One big uncertainty kind of has been put now off the table with the risk remaining that potentially a deal is not happening at the end of the day. But you can see how the capital markets are reacting if things like the trade agreement between US and China, but also now the Brexit seems to come to an end where you have a better certainty. And I can only encourage that what has been said by the commissioner and the minister that we use the time in its best possible way to find a fair agreement, because what we really need in Europe is a platform for growth. And in case uncertainty comes back, it plays badly on the UK, but also on Europe. And hopefully everybody understands that we are already from a growth rate in Europe behind the regions in Asia, China, but also the US. And we have to make sure as Europeans that we do everything to actually accelerate growth. And for that, we need an agreement. I think certainty at least came back. Now we have to use the time as per the suggestions which were made. And I think we are all in favor of having a fair agreement because at the end of the day, Europe can only be competitive if we stand with a clear stance and also have a good agreement. Well, we have the commissioner for the economy here. So what's the plan to get out of this sort of 1% growth trap beyond just making a deal with the UK? I would say the first in this moment, I think that the green deal, that was the first proposal of this new commission. And that in some way is giving to the new commission a profile. This green deal is for Europe the main tool for new growth, frankly speaking, because we can't overestimate the importance of this thing because we are talking about changes in our way of housing, in our way of transport, in energy sources, in foods. So it is a changement, I think that can remind us only to what happened in the 50s and in the 60s. Changement on the real life of hundreds of millions of people if we are serious on this. And I think we will be serious because we are not only announcing a program. We are not only mobilizing investments, but we are taking decision on regulation. We are taking decision on new rules for state aid. We are taking decision on taxation. And this whole packet means a chance for relaunch of our investments and of growth. Then this is not all we need. We need also a review of our fiscal rules to facilitate investments. I would say not only green investments, but in general investments, future proof investment for the future, investment for the digital innovation. And I would mention this as the second point. First point, the green deal, second point to try to have a more coordinated and supportive fiscal policy at EU level. We are now in a better situation than 10 years ago. We should always keep an eye on a high depth in some countries. But in general, we need a really supportive fiscal stance because monetary tools are no more sufficient. We can't imagine to help growth only with monetary decisions. This was perhaps extraordinarily useful in the last years, but now we need to join with our fiscal policies monetary policy decision. I think we're going to hear the exact same thing today from ECB President Christine Lagarde, who will be speaking soon at her news conference. Is he saying that we need fiscal stimulus in Germany? I mean, doesn't everyone think that in the market? Why is that not happening? You know, fiscal stimulus is always something which is demanded. I think we have more fundamental problems we should tackle, which we never address, which is a reduction regulation. I'm saying in Brussels what people there say, always before you put a new regulation out, take two out, you get 100,000 pages with a small fund, but you can't write more pages than that. That would help significantly more. We have in our industry. It will not be easy to do it. No, I know that's not easy, but if you look just for air traffic, air traffic, we operate a lot of airplanes. You know, we have so fragmented air traffic control in Europe, which is nonsense. You know, it's not good for the environment. We have too many planes waiting on the in front of a runway with running engines and all this kind of sort of circling in the air. You know, this is impossible to imagine that we get one air traffic control in Europe, which would be a fantastic nice thing for reduced costs. Brexit, if we don't get a amicable deal, we will increase the cost at the border with zero growth impact. It will be negative. It is just cost. There will no stimulus. And that is all these regulations, you know, border control. If I go to developing countries, you know, the guys ask me, governments ask me, what would you do? I said three things, invest in education, invest in infrastructure, in easy border access. That's it. If you do that right, your country will prosper. In Europe, we are talking about regulation this and regulation that and blah, blah. You know, I think the idea with carbon pricing is a great idea. We have to put a price ticket. Don't call it tax, call it carbon price. But don't regulate which technology should solve the problem. And that is very often happening in Europe, that we say we have an idea and we have also the solution. That's wrong. Industry and science should solve the problem and not the regulator. The regulator should say carbon is a price, fair enough. Everybody has to pay the price, but the people who are more innovative have an advantage. Yes. If I may, the mood in Brussels now is not to add regulation. Not at all. The mood is... He looks skeptical. Yes, but... I've heard that before. Yes, but I can assure you. The mood is, on the contrary, on some targeted issue to have an evolution limiting some regulation. Then we need, obviously, regulation coherent with the Green Deal. You were mentioning the carbon, we call it the carbon adjustment mechanism, not to call it the carbon tax. No, it's a carbon price. Yes. It's a cost. It's a price. Yes. And we need to evolve on some taxation directives, but regulation will not be the core of this new Green Deal. We just got a policy deal, I think. A whole new approach to European regulation. Christian, Germany, that's been a big problem for European growth, right? Didn't we just come off a year of 0.6% growth, I thought I saw? Let's also be honest. I mean, we shouldn't always criticize the home country. It was also the gross engine for a lot of years. To put it in perspective. But first of all, I'm so happy that not a banker is talking about deregulation, but I fully support Frank Apple. I think it is one of the reasons, by the way, why the US is doing so well in economic growth, because it is not only on the tax side, on the fiscal stimulus, it's actually the deregulation across industries. And I'm the first one who always said we needed more regulation in the banking system. But there are certain issues which are now too much. And if we are overdoing it, you actually stop the growth. And we have to be very careful with that. If we think about certain regulations on Basel III, Basel IV, we need to be careful what it means to the European financial markets. Now, Germany, I do think there is some room for fiscal stimulus, but we shouldn't do the mistake to do it too broadly. I think we need very specific items actually linked to the European agenda, i.e. to the Green Deal, to technology, where we think we have a competitive advantage. And if you really think about sustainability, if you really think about ESG, everybody's talking about the cost to it. There are huge costs. But if Europe is playing it the right way, and we have some fiscal stimulus with the support of the corporates and the institutions, it could be actually a growth potential. And if we define these buckets, I think we have a chance actually to accelerate growth and to benefit from it. And in this regard, we can certainly think about some fiscal stimulus. But just fiscal stimulus on its own is not the solution. And hence, I think the balance between deregulation, defining the buckets, and last but not least, we had yesterday a session at a Deutsche Bank agenda point. We need a new narrative for Europe. People still see Europe as the project which brought peace to that region. And that was a fantastic thing. We need now to explain our people for what Europe is standing. And you need to link deregulation agenda, the Green Deal, with a narrative, what it means for the people living in Europe and where our potential is. If we do this, I think there are great chances for this region. Maybe let me add on the stimulus, because I'm not saying that because I'm a German and in favor of balanced budgets, but I'm somehow also a capitalist, which you can't say any longer. And capitalism says that you should not spend the money or the tax money of a future generation. Germany still has two trillion, you know, loans. You know, that's a lot of money, the future, which kids have to pay in the future. So we are living at the moment not in a recession. You know, stimulus is necessary in a recession. We are not in a recession. And, you know, that's the point. We have still to bring these things and we are spending the money of the next generation. When youth is now out and right, you know, on carbon, they should be out as well. And while you are spending our money now, that's not fair. And that is capitalism should take money out of the system or the government should spend less in the moment that the economy is good and use their money. That has not taken place neither in the U.S. and Europe. Germany, it has a limit. If you read books of capitalists, they write you have to put a limit on what you can spend. And Germany has that in their constitution now, which is right, which is actually capitalism thinking and not socialistic thinking or something, because we can't spend the money of the next generation. That's easy. I'm saying that for me as a businessman, you are politicians. So for you, it's difficult because, of course, people are living now and not in the future. But, and therefore, stimulus is easy and it's not necessary because the economy is still growing. Well, I mean, it's an interesting dilemma for Italy, right? Because that is a high debt load country with very little economic growth. So how do you think about how to stimulate the growth picture? I think that I agree the ECB and with the commission that we need a supportive fiscal stance. Supportive also because, especially if we want that the monetary policy does not take alone the burden of avoiding deflation, on keeping economy moving and pushing for growth. So I think this is actually a country which has negative interest rates, of course. There is also reasoning about the burden of future this generation has to be put into perspective, of course. But, of course, I agree with the fact that it's not just spending for spending that would solve our problem. I totally agree. And then I think what unites us is one word, which is investments. So what we need, we have an investment gap. We have actually an investment gap. And if we measure this investment gap, not only with the average investment before the crisis, but with the investment that would be needed to address our climate targets, to address our innovation challenges, looking what is happening around the world, we clearly need to mobilize an unprecedented amount of investments. It has to be public investments. Of course, we cannot do that with public investment. We have limited fiscal space and some country, like Italy, has particularly more limited fiscal space. And we are aware of that. That's why we have a prudent fiscal policy. We keep our depth on a declining path. But still, of course, we need also a creative, original, innovative way of combining public resources, private resources, invest the Yunker plan is a perfect way. You can use your budget money or national money to crowd in to help mobilize to the risk private investment, especially if you want to channel those investments where they are more needed and where they might be beginning a more marginal high cost reducing emission, but then a long term gain also not only for climate, but also for productivity and growth. So that's the pact, the deal we have to do to mobilize the unprecedented amount of private and public investment channeling through climate change issues and innovation. I would like to call it European Green Innovation Deal. That's for me would be the perfect formula. And these are the two frontiers we have to address. And to do that and investment, you know, are good for aggregate amount, but are good for potential growth and supply side. That's what we need. And I think this is kind of the approach also the Commission has put in this Green New Deal. And as said, we are mobilizing 1,000, 1 trillion investment in the next year, but they know this is not enough. Only if you want to reach the old targets, you need more. And if you want to arrive to climate, to emission neutrality by 2050, if you want to enable our manufacturing system to not to lose the race of innovation, artificial intelligence, we really need extraordinary investments. That's what we want to do from the Italian side, but being protagonists of a European Green Innovation Deal. And that's a common challenge and what we are to do a strong pact between public policy and business community. Meantime monetary policy has been the main game in town. Christian, how do you feel about negative interest rates? Well, I said it all. Obviously, I, again, it was the right measure right after the euro crisis. I think the ECB has done a good job in safeguarding the Europe and also safeguarding the Euro and safeguarding Europe as at all. We shouldn't discuss that. I personally think we missed the exit because at some point in time you need to leave this path of negative interest rates and we are now at a point where the monetary policy is coming to its limits. But forget about the impacts for the banks, which is significant, but for that we adjusted our business model. You have seen our restructuring, other banks restructured. We have to do it, we have to deal with that. Otherwise, it would be a bad manager. Forget that. The real long-term impact on the society is the issue we have to talk about. There is not a big majority, if at all a majority, in Germany of people who have access to the cheap money. When I talk about that, I mean cheap money in terms of mortgage financings. That means the disparity between those people who benefit from this kind of monetary policy to those people who have no benefit at all. Actually, they are losing money with the savings we have. It's getting bigger and bigger. That is getting a kind of, in my view, a political problem. Hence, I really do think we need to think broader when we talk about the monetary policy, not only obviously the impact on us, which is not good if we compare ourselves to the U.S. banks. Think about the liquidity reserves European banks have with minus 0.5 percent versus the liquidity reserves of the U.S. banks getting positive interest. It's huge. It makes a huge difference. But the real issue is the long-term impact on society. And therefore, I think we need a pass. And I have great respect for that. I think what the new administration, the ECB, is saying, they are reviewing the strategy. I'm not expecting a short-term, complete turnaround. But I think there is a very constructive thought process. What does it actually mean to all parts of the society? And therefore, I'm confident that we hopefully see the one or the other change, but we have to leave the negative interest in particular for the society. It's interesting. You know, President Trump just here in Davos a few days ago said, Europe has negative interest rates. There you have a competitive advantage. And that he said he could get used to negative interest rates. Is he right? Well, I think it's up to the ECB to take the decisions on this. What I would stress is that, in fact, we can't leave the ECB alone on the perspective of our economy. This was true in the last two or three years. We are no more in the situation we were in 2012, 2013. And unfortunately, not only our fiscal rules, but frequently also our mindset is still to the mindset we had during the deep crisis. Yes, we were risking default in some countries. We were even risking the currency at that time. But now this is no more the case. This doesn't mean that we will spend money just to spend money. I agree perfectly with you. We need targeted spending. But this is not something that, again, the ECB could solve alone. We can't risk a new double-deep crisis. You have restricted policies, monetary policies influencing negatively the situation. We need, I think, to have a selective and concentrated fiscal policy helping monetary policy. Frankly, I don't think that this is a capitalist or socialist. I don't think that Japanese are socialist. They have a very high level of debt. It depends on the circumstances. What is sure is that, in this moment, EU has a rather low level of public debt on average. Both the EU, 76%, and the Euro area, 84%, 85% of public debt. It's a rather low public debt. So no general spending, caution on countries with high level of debt. But we need on education, innovation, and especially the Green Deal, a new effort. You were mentioning the importance of a new narrative. I think that the Green Deal is part of a new narrative. If I ask my wife what is the EU, well, a little bit she knows, but in this moment she would answer the Green Deal. This is defining EU profile. I would like also to add something. I would like very much to have from EU a geopolitical profile for multilateralism, et cetera, et cetera. And we should work on this. But please don't think that a new a change in ECB policies could solve all our problems. Nobody is saying this, but I think we should be very clear that we have to do our part of the job with our fiscal policies and coordinating them. Yeah, may let me add because I'm not sure what is really right because it's such a difficult matter. I think it would be good if we started at least calling the negative interest of a hidden tax what it is actually because the governments are benefiting massively from the negative interest rate. So why are they not giving that delta back to the citizens? Because it's a hidden tax which nobody calls like that. But it is what it is because there is an arbitrage now and the budgets are getting better because the governments are benefiting from that massively to pay less interest rates. Who pays a bill? Who pays a bill of the citizens? So that's the reason why I'm calling it a hidden tax. And I think that's if we start with that language then we will probably get to different conclusions on what's going on. Yeah, but maybe we need also to make the right question. So why in Europe they are lower for instance than the US? And the answer is very easy. If you compare the fiscal stance of the US to the one of the Europe in the last ten years you see exactly the answer to the question why we have lower interest rate than the US because they had the fiscal stimulus. And unless they became a socialist country I don't think so. So they did a quite capitalist way approach but they had the fiscal stimulus after the crisis. So they relaunch grow and so they can have higher interest rate. So my question to my friends when we have this discussion is always so why how can one be at the same time against the low interest rate but against also the only way to make them grow because one of the two I guess. So I'm of the first. I would be the most happiest person if we could have not we could not need for price stability and such a commodity fiscal monetary policy. And the ECB itself is saying please help us not to have to do this but then we are not able even to coordinate our fiscal stance and to channel also our fiscal policy in the area which are more let's say growth friendly productivity friendly again not just a stimulus for a stimulus. Then again we risk being then having said that I am the first to recognize that we would not solve all our problem our structural problem with with more fiscal fiscal stimulus because some of these issues are more deeper. This is a demographic trends technological changes. So indeed we need a unique policy mix where some essential structural reform are needed. Some deepening of our integration including financial integration across you is essential and fiscal policy should be strongly connected and what this commission is doing is essential connecting also the way in which we'll coordinate our fiscal policy to our broader goals which is exactly climate change innovation. So to see how also our targeted stimulus of more favorable treatment for investment could be linked to the kind of investment we actually need to get our goals. And that's I think the new policy framework that I think Europe should gradually establish in order to I mean address this unique situation and also the great opportunity that we have to be the number one in sustainability the number one in innovation and relaunching growth also on the basis of our unique social model which is a social model based on cohesion of unite societies which are more resilient. And so I think that that's a challenge we have and again this stakeholder approach and the idea of a of a big pact between public policy and national level you level and business community is essential if we go in the right direction we can have different views but if we define common goals and missions I think we can get them. Well Europe has to work it out internally Europe has to work it out with the UK and Europe has to work it out with the U.S. President Trump also made it clear that his next target on trade is Europe and he wants to see a deal and he threatened just this week that if we don't get it there'll be new taxes new tariffs on the auto sector Frank what would that do to the very small economic growth that Europe is already producing. You know that you know any tariffs are not good for anybody anyway because you can see that around the world tariffs are avoidable costs at the end of the day it will add costs to everybody and that will be neither good for the U.S. nor for Europe long term or midterm even so that is not good news. Would it push Europe into a recession. No I don't think so and that is also not in the interest of the U.S. so what why should be the U.S. interested to have Europe in a recession what would be better than for the U.S. They will not send more products in Europe if Europe is in a recession so I think there is no interest of the U.S. He's called himself tariff man. Yeah so you know the the point is again tariffs are tariffs are ex cost which are not adding value it's cost which consumers have to pay finally and I can see that I agree with Frank I think it wouldn't put Europe into a recession but it's the next wake up call that we need to have a more integrated Europe in terms of how we integrate our industries how we integrate regulation like in the we always talk about the banking unit but there is so much integration we need to do in the servicing industries that it's easier for us to actually serve out of one home country be it from Germany or from Italy into other European countries we need to finally understand that whether it's the U.S. China or Asia that each country in Europe is too small to compete on itself and therefore we need to work on an integrated Europe in order to have at least a competitive approach to the other two big regions I want to open it up to the room at something because you we're always talking too much about how negative all these kind of things and what whatsoever you know what tariffs might mean for Europe we should start talking more in Europe about what we can do our own the green plan is a step in that direction you know for most social or society problems we have somewhere in Europe a good solution you know them not for every problem but for many we have a good solution so the commission should look into that and say let's talk a copy a good solution we have for housing for education for carbon costs and all this kind of we have a good solution we are reinventing constantly the solution because we have ministers or prime ministers saying our country is slightly different you know we should focus on what we are good at we have a lot of good solutions in Europe and we should just deploy them consistently and we should not always worry about others are doing we should worry what we are doing and that's the opportunity we still have a best education system on the world on average we still have a best infrastructure on average in the world we have less inequality than in the rest of the world so we should build on that and look you know what can we do as Europe to do that and not worry all this what terrors might come and this might happen you know we should focus on our own strengths and we have a lot of strength and that will be the right road map and not always worrying about what others are doing we have power you know we are strong and I'm a proud European we have a lot of power and I'm living here because not it is a bad it's a great place to live we're changing the narrative right here right now um few minutes left definitely want to open it up to our great audience here even though I could go on anybody with a question I'll pick it up if not how's Deutsche Bank doing very good you'll see me smiling so I always said this is a big transformation which was needed and I think we are off to a good start where are we in that transformation I don't get to interview you so what we have I know on tv so here we do it we do it after the annual results next week so let's focus on Europe now okay how's the Italian banking system doing quite better we have in terms of capital liquidity now very good level but also in terms of offset quality the MPL process of reduction MPL has moved very very well it is a success story it has recognized everywhere so we are we are getting close also to go below 3% net in 2021 so we are on track even before the plan so I think also it did help also the more attention at the new level the single supervisor helped the new regulation we contributed to define and also strong commitment by the whole banking sector and also some innovative tools we introduced like the GACS so we have this side of the asset quality which is essential at the European level this is not just MPL of course it's brother issue but is key and I'm confident now thanks also to the new in this case also regulation we introduced after the crisis we have a more resilient to stable new banking system but now we have to push for integration that's a point so we are not exploiting the the potentiality of having a banking union across border banking system so of course we need diversity different banking model some more local we need to I mean ensure an environment where different difference which is key of you identity remains at the safeguarded but also we need to boost more financial integration removing this limitation for the more efficient use of capital liquidity across the banking union completing the banking union with the common deposit guarantee system completing now what we are doing with the backstop so and that would give a lot of potential if we if we go beyond the fragmentation that was a bit reintroduced after the financial crisis so we have great potential and I'm confident because the the the overall the the the the the banking system in Europe and in Italy is sounded solid is ready to the challenge we do have some questions back here yes hi for the order from the times I just wanted to ask a bit more about brexit you mentioned that there's more clarity now that the political situation in the UK is is more stable does this mean we're going to have a year in which people are bullish companies are bullish about the UK do you think there's going to be a flood of investment going into the UK is Deutsche Bank going to you know make beef up its staff in the UK I mean is it is it going to be a good year for the UK look first of all I think it is too early to say everybody is fully bullish so exactly what Frank is saying I think it was a step into the right direction now we need to find out how the trade deal is really finalised and there is still a risk that it's not finalised so I wouldn't say that people are going all in from a from a risk return that might be the wrong call so they wait for for the future development but I think what has been done now and and the clarity and the certainty which has been given over the last six weeks is for sure pointing in the right direction for Deutsche Bank we always said that the UK will be for us a material and very important location I think London will always be one of the key capital markets and therefore we adjusted in a way that we will have a significant location and place over there obviously we prepared for kind of the worst for kind of a breakup last year already so that we could do everything out of Frankfurt that has been done we had to do this but we believe that A there will be an agreement and I certainly believe that London will be a very important capital markets and Deutsche Bank will play its role there so you know we have a big footprint in the UK 50 000 employees and we are working with a lot of companies they have not changed their mind yet because the uncertainty is still there so we have not seen a change we see a change in China because there is now a flaw we don't have a flaw yet for the UK because there is still the risk of a heartbreak and that's the reason why companies are delaying and that's a part of all these tariffs discussion the tariffs are not as bad as they might appear the the uncertainty is the problem because the uncertainty delays capital investments and that delays growth and we see that we are measuring the connectedness of the world and what we have seen in 18 which are the the the last available data what we have seen is not a reduction trade not a reduction information flow not a reduction people flow it reaction in capital flow and that is a problem uncertainty puts pressure on capital investments and we see the same in the UK we have not reached the flaw the the first step of the trade between trade deal between China and US is that we have another flaw which is certainty even if we have not the second step and that's different for still the brexit case and that's the reason why i'm not optimistic that our customers will invest a lot and we only follow our customers so we are not can build just empty warehouses and say great to have an empty warehouse we need customers who are using them and we don't see a lot of activity unfortunately at the moment i think we have one time for just one more question the first two are German friends do you think that the banking union will be finished within the end of the year because of course Germany is one of the one who is opposing to that and the second to all the speaker do you think that it is worthy to revise also the EU competition policy so having the possibility to have bigger companies in Europe competing with the giants in China and US all over i'm happy to also the second you can also Chris you can also the first answer to the second you know i was i was on record i'm a big fan of the banking union i think it's definitely needed for europe look at the competition we have from overseas but you know what with the biggest optimism i have finishing it by the year end 20 not doable but if we can set the right tone and move into the right direction i'm hopeful that we can finish it over the next two to three years that is important for europe but we should be realistic within 12 months time even under a german president for the EU in the second half i think it won't happen i i believe uh you know we are a european champion and we are a global player and and that is a strength of our company because we are present everywhere and can benefit i think we need and that's industry by industry so in the train industry yes we need a european player the problem is i can't blame the commission because the law currently doesn't allow so the commission has rightly decided following the law so the law has to be changed to allow that so therefore you can't criticize anybody because the law is currently what it is i think it would be had been better we are very proud of airbus in europe and that was a the same decision and that's right and we need that for certain industry we have by far too many telecoms so the us is dealing with going down from four to three potentially or you know we are dealing with whatever 30 or 40 that is not efficient that generates additional cost which makes europe less competitive very quickly because i think we're almost out of town uh timing of the banking union the the german finance minister is uh saying that we need two years to uh to shape a potential agreement and five years to put it in place uh so this is a plus three so five two plus three uh this is i think a rather rational uh timing uh the second um i think we need and by the way the the communication i i presented and the commission approved uh 10 years ago about the investment plan and the green deal uh already says that we will change some rules on competition on targeted areas connected to the green deal uh and this is something relevant for the EU uh way of life as you know uh on at the same time uh i think that we can't kill our general competition framework which is in fact successful uh i mentioned only the fact that one of the most successful books uh nowadays in us is a book of the french economist about the successful model of competition in the european economy so we had good things and uh bad things we should change in the targeted and right places our rules without uh disrupting our competition model which was at least at the end successful did you have a final point do you want to you want to take us out on an optimistic note i fully agree with what paul said so i will be particularly lively to repeat that but uh but in some area we need really to update our framework which means competition but also state aid and what we are doing also on the batteries on on on targeted the process where we need also uh to allow more support from from from from the state to to crowd in private capital and and and and address our challenge of also our competitors around the world at the same time our framework is is robust and uh is also guaranteed for everybody so because we are a broad union and we need also to avoid that there is unfair unleavened playing field within the union but at the same time we need to know that in some market the market are global and we cannot just count the participant within the union and then discover there are four five across the globe because that's you really prevent yourself to be competitive so it's a really difficult balance but uh i think we are on a way to finally do this targeted improvements both in the era competition and in the era state aid and i think in in the framework of our innovation policy and green policy that would be necessary and appropriate sounds like you all have your work cut out for you in 2020 thank you