 A big thank you to Mr. Barr for your speech and for answering those questions. Thank you very much again for that. So this leads us straight into our next panel discussion entitled The New Reality, Banking After the End of Lo For Long. The moderator of the session is Maria Tadeo. She already introduced herself just now with the question. European correspondent for Bloomberg. Maria will introduce the panelists. So please take it away. Thank you so much, Ada Connie. And thank you so much to Ms. Andrea for putting together this conference and his team to every year. It's a pleasure to be here. And now let us introduce our wonderful panelists that we have today on this topic, on the far end. We have Claudio Borio, who is the head of monitoring economic departments at the Bank for International Settlements. Next to him we have Steven McRicks-Bake, who is the chief executive for ING. Stuart Graham, who is partner and the head of bank strategy at Autonomous Research. Mr. Jean-Pierre Moustier, who is the chairman of the supervisory board at Arial Bank. And next to me we have Professor Elena Carletti, who is professor of finance at Bocconi University. You also sit on the board of Unicredit. So thank you so much for joining us. Mr. Borio, the title of the session is The End of Lo, and I'm switching to higher for longer. I wonder if you could perhaps take a step back and give us a setup with this has meant in practical terms. Kind of big picture. Yes, absolutely. Let me start by saying, well first of all, that I'm delighted to be here for what is Andreas Inria's last ECB forum as chair of the SSM. I'm sure he will be back plenty of times in the future. So let me say that clearly the end of low for long is very good news for banks. It provides an important boost to net interest margins and therefore underlying profitability. I'm sure they were looking for this for quite a long time. Having said that, I think that there are three buts. The first but is that the transition is gonna be bumpy. The second, and I'm sure we will hear much more about that later, is that there are still some very important underlying structural weaknesses in the banking sector that we have not been able to sort out and that has to do with that is reflected in particularly in very low price to book ratios. And the third, I will not say it now. I will basically mention it, save it for later to keep the suspense going. But it's about a very important long-term challenge that the banking industry is facing. So let me elaborate on the first, the bumpy road ahead. And I think it's important to realize, I'm not sure how many people do, that the situation that we are facing is unprecedented by post-war standards, Second World War standards. And in fact, probably unprecedented even going further back. And that is that for the first time, we are witnessing recession risk. There is clearly recession risk around the world. While at the same time, in the context of the conjunction of a strong monetary policy tightening to bring inflation down and widespread financial vulnerabilities. And by widespread financial vulnerabilities, I really mean in terms of the big picture, the fact that debt levels are historically high, that asset prices are still quite elevated. And we're coming out of a very, very long period of exceptionally low interest rates. So we're really seeing what the legacy of that is. And let me clarify what I mean by unprecedented. If you look at the post-war period, particularly for advanced economies, you can see that there is a very clear divide in the mid-1980s in terms of the types of recession that we've had. Until the mid-1980s, the recessions were largely driven by higher inflation, monetary policy tightening, and that had to bring the inflation under control. But the financial system was repressed. And the fact that the financial system was repressed meant that there was little scope to see the overt financial instability that we saw later. Following the mid-1980s, the financial system was liberalized, central banks, and structural forces brought inflation down. And therefore the types of recession that we saw were more like the result of big financial expansions, strong credit growth, strong asset price growth, strong risk taking, that were basically generating the subsequent contraction. And the GFC is the greatest and the most obvious example of that. So that we shifted from what were inflation induced to financial cycle induced recessions. What we're seeing now is the combination of the two. And this sort of raises some important questions because first of all, we haven't seen it before. And second of course, the room for maneuver for central banks is much more restricted than it was during the second phase. Now, it's important also to realize that what we have seen so far, so far is just the materialization of interest rate risk in the United States, in the non-bank financial sector. And I would say that Credit Suisse was a bit of a bystander, a bank that had a broken business model than then was caught in the turmoil. But what's ahead of us, and it is ahead of us, is the materialization of credit risk. And the only question is when and how intense and whether the banking sector is prepared to sort of deal with it. Now, there is a certain, what I would call, impatient illusion here. I mean, the lag between the materialization of interest rate risk and of credit risk can be quite long. So how strong is the financial sector? Now, in that context, the first question to ask is how large can the losses be? Now, and some analysis that we've done at the BIS, which roughly is similar to what the IMF has come up with, is that the actual losses that could be ahead of us could be quite large in a stress scenario. So if you assume, for example, that interest rates could be, say, 200 basis points from where they are now have been recently, then the type of losses could be as high as those that we saw during the great financial crisis in a very sort of outside scenario. Now, of course, the banking system is much better capitalized. It's much better capitalized than it was before the GFC. Having said that, if you look, for example, at credit ratings, whether you look at standalone ratings or all-in ratings, they have actually deteriorated since the mid-2000s, 2010, actually, after roughly since then. Obviously, since the great financial crisis as well. And one unknown here, I would say, is, and this came up in a number of cases before, is the exposures and the state of the non-bank financial sector. Because the exposures to that sector tend to be rather opaque. That sector has grown in leaps and bounds since the great financial crisis that was partly intended. But still, there is hidden leverage. There are liquidity mismatches in the sector. And what was not intended is the fact that the regulation, the prudential regulation from a systemic perspective in that sector has lagged behind. Well, thank you for that. And you gave me a perfect segue to the next question for Professor Cataletti, because Claudio just talked there. And he said, we've only seen a minor part play out. And I know that you and I were talking behind stage where you said this change in cycle and the tighter policy, it's not just rates. There's a whole universe around it. What do you mean by that? And how does it affect banks and financial institutions? Thank you, Maria. First of all, good morning to everyone. I also want to thank a particular Andrea for the invitation to this conference. It's a pleasure and a honor to actually be here and be able to speak on this occasion. So let me come to the question, just to complement what Claudio said. When I mean that there is more than rates, I mean we are going across a period of tightening of monetary policy more generally. And when we look from the perspective of banks, they have already been taking some action that have affected banks quite importantly. For example, they change in the condition for the TLTRO funding, or they change in the remuneration of the minimum reserves. And now the current discussion on how big these minimum reserves should be. So far, let me say the banking sector has gone through these changes quite well in a sense that in aggregate, there were issues concerning, for example, the cliff effect related to the change in the condition of the TLTRO. But these cliff effects have not materialized or at least not yet using the words of Claudio. But going forward, there may be some asymmetries and heterogeneity in particular in terms of small versus large banks or across jurisdiction, depending on how much the various jurisdiction, the banks in the various jurisdiction were actually relying on the use of central bank funding, for example. So at the moment, a little bit of an increase in cost of funding, a little bit of a misgain in terms of lack of revenues from the remuneration of minimum reserves, but not substantial effect. But going forward, in particular on the uncertainties that the monetary policies creating on some decision like the size of the minimum reserves, this may have an implication. So it's very good in that sense that the supervision is within the monetary policy that the two can talk to each other and can really take a sort of holistic approach as to what the monetary policy decision should be. Perfect, and now let's go to Mr. Van Rikswijk because in your recent earnings that you put out, and just to cite you, you say, and it goes perfectly into the title of the session, you say the cycle of central bank hikes has obviously affected positively the profitability of financial institutions and banks, but you also say this appears to have passed. And what it seems to me is that you're saying it's not a sustainable growth model just to focus on that one aspect. So I wonder first a general question as to how you believe this change in cycle has meant for banks, but also what happens next because based on what you say here, no longer you've gone from low, it's over, higher for longer, but you're already thinking what comes next. Well, I mean clearly interest rates have been negative for quite a long time and I think it has now benefited the banks that interest rates went back to, let's say positive levels, but also with a positive interest rate curve which we haven't seen for a long time. So although we think it is good, many people are a bit surprised by it and I can understand it because it hasn't been there since 2014. So that is certainly when that changes so rapidly then it will cause some nervousness in the markets or nervous with the population. Still I think it's good that banks have good profitability and at the same time what you do now see is that with the polls and rates of what the ECB has announced, what the FET has announced, that and we have seen it in previous cycles that interest rates and also the positive rates gradually move up, that's just a given and we've seen it in all the cycles in the past. I think the main difference from what we now see compared to what we saw in the past is that the interest rate increases from let's say minus 50 base points to around 4% took place in a matter of 18 months. In the previous cycles, these hikes took place in approximately three to four years. So the speed at which interest rates increased was dramatically faster than we saw in the past. That's also a bit the disruption that you're talking about. And what we see is gradual competition coming back. Banks look of course at their balance sheets in their own businesses in a different country. So for us that's different in Germany than in the Netherlands and in Belgium than in Spain. But still, you see gradually and depending on let's say the balance sheet composition, the amount of assets and liabilities in the market, the way that your strategy is in terms of trying to acquire newer customers, the products that you want to feature, that then causes competition and therefore it's a matter of time before interest rates move up further and the speed of which, again, like I said, depends on competition. That's why I said that. Okay, excellent. Again, I just ask you just to go back to what you say in your own earnings. You do say so far it has been good for profitability but you also suggest it appears to have paused. Should we read that as the positive effects, the implications for banks? This is not going to write through into 2024. You need something more in this strategy. It's not just a sustainable growth strategy to depend on higher rates. Well, I mean, look clearly, I mean, I believe I'm here in the house of the people who determine the rates. So the question is also more, so to the monetary side of this institution, but basically based on the announcements that were made by the ECB, I made that statement, clearly, and that goes for our bank and for a number of other banks. But if you look at R&G, we are 80% of our revenue comes from interest. I will not complain over the past 12 months or so, we have been held by the higher interest rates. But if you look at any business model that has 80% dependency on one type of input and 20% on your other inputs, which in our case is commissions, you have a business model that you can still improve in the balance. And I've always said when I start in my role, that they need to improve their balance and we will keep on working on that. Well, thank you for that. Mr. Graham, I wonder, what are your thoughts so far that we've heard on the panel? And I wonder, we talked about this improved profitability, which is obviously tangible and we've seen reflected in earnings. But then why are valuations perhaps not more attractive? What is the reason behind it then? Yeah, I think there's three reasons, really. One is the perception that European banks are over-earning because interest rates have gone up very quickly and as Stephen said, deposit costs have to catch up. So there's a sense that they're over-earning on net interest income and they're over-earning on asset quality, bad debts are gonna go up. And obviously nobody knows how much that's gonna happen. The second is financial repression, whether that's banking taxes or MRR, this sense that shareholders own the losses but don't own the profits, somebody else will take that away from them. And then thirdly is muscle memory. Just European bank equities have been a very bad investment for investors for a very long period of time and that kind of mental scarring takes a long time to go away. There's this perception that somehow European banks or European policymakers via the banks will always find a way of disappointing you. So I think people are very reluctant to buy into a this time it's different argument. I mean, if we look at the, I think we'll come and talk about the financial repression one in a second, but if we talk about the over-earning, I spend all my days talking with investors, every conversation I have is how much is net interest income going to decline 2024 and 2025 versus 2023? So everybody knows it. It's just a debate about, do you think the deposit beat is gonna be 40, 50, whatever you think it's going to be. So when you look at the cost of equity at the moment, which we calculated about 16%, that's simply the inverse of the consensus earnings expectations. And it's another way of saying the market doesn't believe those earnings expectations. I guess the good news is, if you think of those three items, muscle memory, it's kind of backward looking. As long as European banks deliver, it should fade. On the, are they over-earning? Well, we're gonna find out in 24 or 25. I mean, we'll work it out, how much asset quality deteriorates and how much interest rates the cost of deposits catches up. And in terms of financial oppression, well, quite a lot of people in this room have quite a bit of input into that. So if you wanna stop that one, there's something you can do about it. But maybe we leave that for later in the panel. We are going to talk about it too. I have a number of follow-up questions, just on what you said, but we'll do it later. Yes, go ahead. Can I add to that? So indeed, sometimes it depends also on societies that it's being said that, okay, there was now the case of over-profits being made. And it's always a bit difficult since it becomes quite quickly very technical to say, well, let's look at the past 10 years. Let's look at the profitability of European banks compared to what we see in the past 12 months. And the 30 seconds that you get where the media says, well, your time is now up. And so let's move on, but let's also not forget and that it was due to, it was impacted of course by the monetary policy of the ECB. And by the way, for the right reasons, let that not be a mistake. It's actually decreasing interest rate, but it just has meant that banks' profitability of European banks have come under pressure for a long time. Even the rates in Europe started to become negative in 2014. It was only in 2020 when we started to discuss at what level can we also charge or pass all negative rates to customers and then only with thresholds of, in our case, above 100,000 euros. So it took six years for us to move to a negative interest rate territory. Now luckily, I mean, negative interest rate as a concept is already something that is quite difficult to understand in real life. So that has taken a long time. And also, and it's a second technical argument, of course in our balance sheet, we have long dated assets with fixed patterns in them. And therefore a pass-through of higher deposit rates compared to a pass-through or let's say, revolving of your asset book is a complete different, it was a complete different factor and takes much longer. Now, as you can already figure out and you're already looking at me like, what are you saying? It's very technical, it takes a long time. So that story is difficult and still I'm going to repeat that story whenever I'm in the media in a simple way as I can. But I'm also happy also Andrea that you sometimes say something about it because it just helps if in a more impartial part like the ECB says these things also in public. But I think Bloomberg gives you more than 30 seconds but nonetheless, we'll give you more time next time but also there's an hour now, so that's good to go into more details for sure. Jean-Pierre, so far, well I wonder if you have any thoughts of what's been discussed so far and I wonder you have an enormous experience in banking. In this change of cycle, how would you play it strategically, the changes that we've seen over the past year? Well, I would like to first of all thank Andrea for having me here. He's a wonderful person but I'll comment about it later. At least he doesn't kick me out of the room before I speak. But I would like to come back about what happened during the negative interest rate period and then what we could look at now that rates are normalizing. During this negative rate period, bankers had to cut costs, work on raising capital, changing slightly their business model. In the meantime, which was the largest by market cap financial institution in continental Europe in July 2021. BNP? Santander? No. He was a fintech with 2,000 staff and 200 million euro net income. Market cap, 71 billion euro. It's called EDION. No, its market cap is 25 billion euro. So when we bankers were cutting our costs, when we were looking to raise capital, we just missed 72 billion euro value creation because we were not looking at what was happening. We were right to cut costs. We were right to raise capital. But what can we do in the future not to miss the 72 billion euro value creation? And I think that when rates normalize today, we're saying, well, the best strategic development for a bank is to buy back shares. Fair enough. Buying back shares is the best ARI creation deal you can do. You have a 13% return on equity. You buy back shares at 50% discount. 24% ARI transaction. Nothing beats that. But it's a very short term. In the meantime, do we have another EDION going to develop something? Probably not. Because now that rates are higher, EDION or other fintechs cannot fund themselves. And so the benefit of higher interest rate is to generate more net interest income on one side but open up the game. And so should we think about a new strategy for bank and how can banking supervision support that? What I'm going to say here is easy to say because I'm not a bank CEO anymore so I can say things that I will never apply. So that's fine. But nevertheless, we need to think that bankers are no car manufacturer. It's an insult to some bankers. Maybe you're a compliment. I don't know how you look at car manufacturers. Why? Because we could use OEM, meaning fintechs, to provide us with verticals that banks will not have either the resources or the critical size to develop. And let me give you some examples because I spent the past two years to look at fintechs. For one of the Spark we raised, we didn't invest in the Spark because we felt the valuation were wrong and we were right not to invest because the valuation have collapsed by so 132 fintechs in the past two years. And I can tell you that there are a lot of business model verticals today that bank can use in order to complement their business model instead of willing to develop them internally, take a stake in the fintech, have them to provide the service on a white label and develop. What are they? Some examples, I'm very happy to elaborate privately afterwards. Look at payment. I mentioned ADIAN, but there are very interesting payment businesses. One of the most antiquated payment activity in the banking sector is cross-border payment when you go outside of the eurozone with correspondent banking. It is ridiculous. It is ineffective, it is long, and it is expensive. There's a wonderful fintech called Banking Circle which has a banking license and is developing cross-border payment on an extremely effective basis. What can bank do? Do you want Banking Circle to be the next ADIAN or do you want to look at it in a very creative way? Let's look at e-commerce. On e-commerce, you can develop working capital financing, working with fintech in an extremely effective way where you have almost zero risk on the credit side because you get each time there's a payment you get reimbursed. The return on equity on this business is 24%. It's not bad for financing business and you have a lot of fintechs doing that where banks can be involved. Let's look at insurance. There are wonderful fintechs on the intro tech side which can be wonderful complement to a bank business model. Alan for his French, a fintech, you know the French, I don't tell you about it. Life would be so much better without the French. They were seeing it in the credit. But Alan is a very, very good fintech which if I know them before, I would have been offering them within the network of the bank. In Italy, in Germany, we are not present and their offer is absolutely unbelievable rather than doing a joint venture with AXA, with Alliance or waiver. I mean the quality of what is offered here is super good. You can do the same for car insurance. You can do the same for pet insurance for instance or others. There are very, very good business model there. Let's look at wealth management. You have some fintech today which offer absolutely unbelievable wealth management offers which are cross-border, super effective. I can tell you if I had known the wealth management companies I looked at to invest in and I was really willing to invest in them, I would have replaced two-thirds of the private banking staff of Unicredit just to offer their platform and the quality of service to the client will be unbeatable, unbeatable. And now let's look at the last example and of course I shut up. Yes, it's benefits and reward services. Benefits and reward services. It's a banking business. What do they do? They issue credit card which are targeting specific services, meal, health care or well-being. What do these companies do? They have a payment business. They have a huge float. You look at Edenred which is listed so you can have an example and do anything. Edenred has 500,000 corporate clients, 2 million merchants, 35 million individual clients and a 6 billion float where they pay zero interest because it's prepared card. So what should bank do? They should develop the benefits and reward services business. The fintech is doing that. That has been bought by your French bank and I'm sure that they will develop very well. So what I'm saying here is that we should look and the regulator should look at it because it's a supervision issue to start with. Can bank develop their business by having verticals so to a certain extent outsourcing part of their business to third party which is from a supervision point of view not an obvious answer because you take operational risk. You take the risk of making sure that the offer is going to work but I think negative interest rate blinded us in terms of development. The normalization of rates blinded us in terms of short term strategy we buy back shares but what will be left afterwards and as you mentioned rates are not going to remain too high and might go back down and we have a window to rethink the bank business model because I think there's zero chance in Europe that we will have big bank mergers because it does not make sense to have cross border merger in Europe for big retail network. So we need to think laterally and differently about what we can do but I'm not a bank CEO and I leave that to the bank CEO's to do that and to the regulators to think about what to do. But can I just ask us a follow up question because it seems to me on the one hand you seem very excited about a number of areas but you also seem, it seems there's there's still perhaps an element of disappointment where you go back and think in the past there were opportunities that were good but you say we're focused perhaps on just cutting costs and a number of other issues that prevented us from perhaps seeing the future and you said the word perhaps we were blind in the past but how do you stop being blind in the future? The sense that I get from what you say is that you believe parts of even this debate are antiquated perhaps that. Well I think that why was I blinded but any other banks here were blinded because nobody created Asian. So 72 billion, that's a big miss. So I think that bank CEOs are focused on the short term issues and very few people in a bank are telling them look you can think laterally. I'm going to give you a last example which is a provocation but I could not resist. In 50 years, Andrea will be in paradise as all good regulators. I will be in hell as all bankers. And we will be discussing the impact of the digital euro which will not be capped anymore but which will replace all the euros and banks will have no more deposit. So the bank business model in 50 years will be a business model where if the digital euro develops which I zero, you know, I think that it has all the chance to develop and I zero doubt that it will not develop. The cap will be removed. The deposit will shift towards an asset. The bank will have to fight for deposit. They will price their deposit in a real way because today they don't price their deposit at all. Monetary transmission will be wonderful because it will be immediate basically. And banks will have to manage their balance sheet in a completely different way. It will be in 50 years and Andrea Sun and I will be having a good time looking at the successors of Claudia, Andrea Sun and others saying, luckily, it did not happen when we were there. I see a lot of reaction. So yes, let's add, Claudia, you can go first. Yeah, just a point which I think complements what you've just said. Clearly, it is very important from banks to rethink about their business model. And at the same time, we know that in the, what you might call the traditional banking area, there is a work capacity in Europe. And that there is an exit, there is an exit problem. That exit problem has to do with the nature of banking. It has to do with politics as well. And I think that somehow that issue will have to be addressed. Now, the looking forward as opposed to looking back, I think what you said is absolutely essential and we should not forget that there is a huge digitalization, call it revolution, which is going on. And that offers lots of opportunities for banking, but it also offers, it generates a number of threats because there are people outside the banking area that are actually have been much more nimble to exploit them. And yes, there is a sense in which one can imagine that a retail CBDC might be an issue, but it depends very much how it is designed. And on the other hand, one can think of the provision of a digital currency, particularly at the wholesale level as providing huge opportunities again for banks. You can imagine a future in which you have tokenized CBDC at the wholesale level. You have tokenized deposits as some countries are already doing. And on that platform, you can tokenize assets. And all of that would generate huge opportunities in terms of the ability to generate new types of contracts and new type of profit opportunities. But you have to be nimble enough to take advantage of that. Well, thank you for that. And now, of course, thank you. I just want to go back to something that you said. So first of all, I fully agree with you that in the moment when banks are sort of rethinking about how to make their revenues sustainable, as Stuart was saying, this is still a big impediment in the price book. Going for vertical business or trying to find opportunities, whether it's cooperation, whether it's acquisition of FinTech or other entities is fundamental. And I think boards and CEOs are currently, maybe we can hear a CEO later, but they are currently doing it. But there is one aspect in which maybe I slightly disagree with you, as a former board member of you, maybe I constructive challenge you. We always agree together at the time, but anyway. No, no, I just want to say one thing, which is I wish to believe that the share buyback maybe is not just an issue of short term. I wish to believe, and I hope not to be wrong, that the share buyback in the short term is a boost to increase the price to book, increase the attractiveness of the sector, and therefore give the possibility to banks to do even more this type of thinking that you have in mind than if they have a very low price to book. So I hope this is the way in which the share buybacks are used at the moment. It's not just a matter of increasing short term, but it's a matter of making banks more sustainable in the longer term and more attractive in the longer term. No, but I don't disagree with that. I'm just saying share buyback is a tactical approach. It's not a strategy concern to what the banks are doing. If you push your thinking to the end, there will be only one share remaining or zero share of a bank. No, no, no. There will be, no, no, no. There will be, of course, a limit to watch. This can be done. But I wish to think it's a mean for a longer term vision. It's not just a short term. Yes, and no, because as Stuart was mentioning, I mean, you cannot just keep your share price high because you buy back shares. You need to keep your share price high because you show growth and efficient business model, which is de-risk, et cetera, et cetera. So the transformation of the business model needs to happen. They have to come together, for sure. They have to come together. I am loving this panel. See you in the room. I know you're Mr. Van Vriesvek. You're putting your hand up. The floor is yours. Is there so much more? Are there so much more to say? Let me try to box myself. So clearly, we need to continue to work on growth and development and diversification of our businesses. In all honesty, and even in the times at interest rates where low or negative, we have invested considerably in all kinds of fintechs and the likes, some of which have not turned out to be too good of a success. And that's where, no, if I say euphemistically, and there comes also the crux of the matter in the fact that we are also, first of all, there to keep our customers safe. And there is a limitation also in the construct of regulation. And that tension, in that field of tension, I struggle, to be honest. Since on the one hand, we want to diversify, we need to do that in a profitable way. Because if we do not make our returns, then the question is, why do we invest in things that are sub-herbal? And that's a logical question when you are subject to the pressure of the market. And in that setting of how then to be able to grow, and I think that there was a part of it, that the speech was part of your question, was on your speech on the non-bank advice. We've seen in Europe that's the total, and that's only the balance sheet. Just name this as an example, not only about non-bank advice. If you look at the total size of business lending in Europe from 2008 to 2022, I think those are even ECB figures that grew from 7.3 to 10 trillion. And of that, more than 80% came from the non-banking advice sector. As a matter of fact, and people often say that in Europe, business is largely a banker's market. But if you look at total business lending in Europe, 52% already comes from non-bank advice. And that means that within a very short period of time, part of what's happening in the world has been taking place outside of the banks, which is impeding on growth. Whether the society likes it or not, I leave it in the middle, but that's one of the struggles. If you look at the number of the developments, whether it is in crypto or DLT, then for the right safety reasons, we are limiting ourselves. And supervisors are also warning us to be careful not actually to play around with it. And by the way, I fully subscribe to it. And I'm very careful to introduce any Bitcoin services to any retail customers in any of the markets in which we're active. Wholesale is a bit different. But it also means that also part of that playing field is outside of our sector. And I can name a few more, but I will not do that. So in the end, and we need to have that search for growth to the development for the markets in which we operate in the real economies. But the question is, where do we strike the balance between being safe in our own right, but as sometimes described as a water bed, you push here and it comes out there. But out there is not without, because we're not in it. So I'm all for safety, which is very good. I was not a zero for nothing in my previous life. But we need to balance it also with, where do we think banks can fulfill a core role? And whether that's all the fintechs or not, I want to park the debate, but I think it's important that we also keep looking at where can banks play a role. And of course, then put the bells and whistles around it to keep us safe. That's maybe, you know, that's maybe, go ahead, do you have a question? No, I just had a question because you've used the word safe and safety many times in your answer now. I wonder basically, that's the issue when your clients go to you, where the average person that banks with ING, that's what they value the most. So everything else in this universe, it maybe doesn't speak to them. So the appetite is not there. So your business, it's positioned in a different way to some of the other opportunities. We're talking about different things. Well, partially, because I mean, it's not about safety or it can be safety ends. And I think what I'm trying to advocate is, it can be safety ends. So let's also make sure we create the room to invest in new things as well, a bit to what you said. In that setting, by the way, and you talked about digital, 62% of our customers we deal with only to the mobile. We have 38 million customers, 97% of our interaction with our customers is only digital. So we can be digital without being a FinTech. We do, by the way, collaborate with a number of FinTechs and we do, by the way, put a number of their solutions in place when we can. But in the end, digital is also a means to an end. It is something about either, it's about getting a superior customer experience. It's easier, or instant, or personal, or relevant. And digital isn't a neighbor to it. It is not a means to an end, let's be digital. Now we're digital because we can provide a better service to customers. And in that digital, the question is, how far do we then go? And can you do more than that you do now? And are there limitations or inhibitions that we see as banks? And I think that is indeed the case that other companies don't have and that's why we need to find a middle ground. I also want to say something about M&A, if you allow me. So I would love to do M&A. Well, when it makes sense, and all these things before I know the endless community. And I've said, so, but there is also, and you are a European and I'm the same. And in the bank setting, what we do still see, and that's just fact, that's not views. There is compartmentalization of capital and equity. And that is an inhibitor for European consolidation. Even if you would make an acquisition, also given the fact that the interest rates have grown so quickly over the past number of months, it means that from an accounting point of view, you have to basically write down your existing mortgage book. And as you may know, ING has a considerable mortgage book, which is largely fixed rates in Germany, in Belgium and in the Netherlands. That means that if you make these type of acquisitions, you write it down because you have invested in mortgages at rates which you are considerably lower in the past than now. And of course, it will come back to you over time, but on a day one acquisition, from a day one acquisition point of view, it can have such a negative capital impact that it just makes it impossible to do an acquisition. And we need to solve those things. Now, unfortunately, personal opinion, I think there are more non-Europeans coming to power these days. And I think it's important that if we want to maintain also for the stability and the fluidity of the capital liquidity in Europe, we need to have one Europe. So I'm not too optimistic short-term about the direction we're traveling into, but that needs to be fixed. And to the account needs to be fixed to get to that cross-border M&A setting that people would like to make the banking sector in Europe healthier. So you think this idea of European mega-champions and this massive cross-border operations, we've heard it for many years now and hasn't fully materialized. Well, you say you sound still pretty downbeat. You're not very optimistic. I know it's Friday, but yes, yeah. So what's gonna change this now that you have, well, you're at the ECB. So what would you like to see realistically to change at least the tone finally? No, this is not the message for the ECB. I think the ECB has given all the right messages. As a matter of fact, we have been speaking about it now and again how to do something about it, but it's damn hard in Europe. And we need to continue to find that path. I think we need to continue to advocate it. I'm very happy with the way that the ECB advocates that view. I think we should just continue on that path because in the end, that will be better for Europe. Both Stuart and Jean-Pierre, I believe you had comments you wanted to make, but Stuart, I will go with you first. Yeah, I just wanted to sort of make the point. I agree a lot with what's being said, but I don't think it's either or in terms of shared buybacks or investments. I mean, if you look at the profitability of European banks, if you say they're gonna make a 12% return on tangible, let's say risk-weight assets grow at 3%, you can do an 80% payout, 50% cash, 30% share buyback, that should be reasonably recurring. When it comes to on the investment side, I think we have to face facts. Banks are not very good at technology. I mean, if you look at the amount of money that banks throw at technology, if you say most banks spend 10% of revenues on technology spending, let's say about 40% of that is so-called change the bank. Those figures dwarf anything that Adion and Co do in R&D, and yet the bang for buck that banks get for it is not terribly good, and we can kind of go into why that is that case. That's not to say they shouldn't do it and not to say that investors will look for banks to come up with some longer term growth outlook, but I think we have to accept that there's a kind of a skill set shortage and how do you say, institutional barriers to expecting a great deal of success out of that. So as Stephen said, M&A is damn hard, but I think expecting banks to reinvent themselves technologically wise is probably damn hard as well. And just quick follow up, before you said European banks had a part of perception problem, I wonder if you could elaborate more on that, but I guess more to the point, how to change it. Well, I mean, unfortunately, I don't think it's a sort of silver bullet, but I think the way to change it is if we're saying that banks are over earning and when rates come down, they won't make as much money and banks will have some bad debts because of the macro, we're gonna see that. So that'll play itself out in the next couple of years. So I don't think there's anything that the banks have to do there other than show their resilience. And my personal view is I think they will be resilient and I think the problems will be probably in the non-bank space or somewhere else, but let's face it, if we're gonna get a recession, this has been the most talked about and most anticipated recession of all time. So it'll be a pretty dumb chief risk officer not to have kind of thought about any different opportunities, I would have thought. And on the muscle memory issue, I mean, eventually if they keep buying back shares and they keep delivering, I mean, we've calculated if you assume that the sector's an 80% payout ratio for all time and I guess maybe people in this room might disagree with that, but if they were to do so, then basically the current market capitalization, a trillion euros, you will get a trillion euros back by 2029. So when we sit here in the 2030 symposium, either the share prices are much, much higher or we were very wrong on the earnings outlook, but something is wrong without mathematics. Our bet is it's the share prices that are wrong. Let's hope so. Okay, interesting, go ahead. Just a few comments. Just going back to the technology side. I am convinced that banks will not be able to develop internally the verticals I mentioned. This is why I think the business model is car manufacturer where you use OEM will provide the verticals. It's a banking supervision issue. How do you allow banks to do that to have suppliers basically for their business model? And when you look at how these fintechs develop, the agility, the mobility they have and the ability to fine tune the product for the client satisfaction side, and it's super and likely that banks will be able to do that. And I mean, I wasn't able to do that, but I mean, there are much better chief executive now, but nevertheless, I think it's very difficult. The second point is on M&A. In Europe, we have a fragmented market. If you look at Europe and GDP, not very different from the US, if you look at the number of customers, not very different from the US, but on the retail side, you have 16, 18 different markets. It's extremely difficult to generate synergies between different retail businesses. So I don't think that Bank M&A is going to really create value when you look at it and compare it to share-back-back. Share-back-back is very good now, and I've never said the opposite, but it's not an end in itself. You need to look at how the business model developed because the sustainability of the PE will be based on the ability of banks to show growth and proper profitability. So share-back-back is a way to push up the price short-term, but when you stop the share-back-back, you'll lack the money, you know, and it will click and then you go down on the cliff. So, you know, you basically have, you know, to see, and on purpose, you know, being, you know, exaggerating a little bit about the shift of the business, but there are much more important things to do in changing the bank. But I think that we need to think a little bit laterally in order to see there are alternatives. Otherwise, there will be new edgings and the banks will miss this immense value creation that we have missed on the e-commerce side. And you also mentioned, and we hear this repeatedly, when you look at the big numbers, the difference between the US and Europe is actually not that different. But again, when you go back to valuations, even perception of the idea, who are the big champions? No, but the big numbers between Europe and US are not different on a consolidated basis. We have series of individual markets which are segmented. So you cannot develop zero synergies between two retail banks in Europe, zero. Okay, so doing M&A for the retail business is impossible, except if you have a digital offer, you have a very good wealth management business. I think on the wealth management side, you can have a very good cross-border digital offers. There are a few fintechs which offer that. If I had known them, as I said, I would have been buying them, not partnering, but buying them to offer a pan-European product. Besides wealth management on the pure retail side, merchants do not work. At that time, I'm very, very convinced. By the way, it is not only capital and equity limitations, but also regulation on data, different mortgage requirements, regulations. So if you can't front to back integrate these products, that's currently, there's a stack of paper so high in the Netherlands with the requirements of a mortgage, and the same stack of paper is in Germany, in German. But then completely differently, and the same in Belgium and France or wherever you. And so, because that is 90%, and we have tried some of it, to be honest. And so, but in the end, if you want to do cross-border retail banking, it bodes for what we call organizational integration. That means not only, that means and the balance sheet and the capital and equity. That means your IT systems, but it also means product integration. If you can't realize product integration because the products are the same, the benefits will be limited. So when talking about, and that's of course the advantage that the state has, how there is one type of mortgage, well there are of course more mortgages, but there is one regulation around mortgages, there's one regulation about data, and there's one regulation about customer safety, and so forth, and so forth. So it's not only capital and equity, it's the whole stack, because the product integration, the level of product integration you can do, determines how much you can integrate your organizations. And of course that's paramount. But again, this goes back to the issue. Some would say, if you think about just the European Union as a whole, this is a massive single market. It is clearly the moneymaker, certainly for the union, but definitely when it comes to this particular sector, it is massively underused. So then again, going back to my question, I asked you this before, but then what changes this dynamic? I know you said you endorse a message from the European Central Bank, that you mentioned the politics. What's going to change these dynamics? But there needs to be something. You think this is what's required to change this? Yeah, to be honest, I don't know. So I think that the realization of Europe, and I think we need to be better in that, that it is for the benefit of the population of Europe that we have a more aligned and harmonized state of European legislation, that in the end will come back to the banking union. I mean, in the end, if you, let's say, have a one deposit and one lending market, clearly it is much more efficient how lending and deposits and savings will clear that is to the benefit of Europe. And that needs to be seen, and currently that is not sufficiently the case, but perhaps you have a better answer. Yes, I understand. No, I... Ladies first. Okay, thank you. No, I think we go back a little bit to the discussion we had yesterday when Jacques Del Rosier and also Anna Botin was talking, and I think here the banking sector itself actually has a bigger role to play because here I believe in particular, European supervisor and banks are actually the same boat because they all want a more integrated market and the removal of these impediments. So perhaps the banks themselves can actually play a big push in this direction. And maybe hopefully politics and regulation and all these impediments will follow, but it's maybe the banks that have to show how beneficial this integration actually can be. It can be one element that certainly may help. Yeah, I think nothing will change the dynamic basically. So it's not going to work. Let's be super... No, but let's be super clear about it. We are not all going to be speaking Dutch or French or whatever because you need to have one single market. You know, we say we have one single European market. It's true and it's wrong because we have, you know, the market in France is different to the market in Germany to the Netherlands. When you want to issue a mortgage, very different. You're not going to have a convergence of the local laws or all the local specificities or tax, et cetera, well beyond the 50 years I mentioned. So that's not going to work. And let's do that. But there's one thing which can develop. So this is why I think EDIS or whatever, forget about it. No, no, but we were speaking about EDIS for so many years. It's not here, it's never going to be here. And I'm making a statement here. But where we can progress is on the capital market side. And on the capital market side, you know, Europe is behind. And it's a real problem for European banks or for European investors. So we need to have a change in the pension fund and in the insurance company's ability to invest in European asset. So the commission did its work in terms of the prospectus and the regulation. But where are the investors? And the investors have not developing enough because we are lacking versus the US, the size of the pension fund and the ability of insurance companies to invest. So if there is a priority today, it's not to have a convergence of tax regulation, of, you know, employment regulation, of mortgage regulations, I'm going to work. But it's on the capital market side to develop much more investors to fund our retirement. And it's super important for me now to fund the retirement. So I came much more than 10 years ago, you know, and to be able to, you know, access and develop debt and equity capital market to fund growth in Europe. We don't have today in Europe the ability to provide gross capital is ridiculously low. It's growing, but it's super low compared to the US in Asia. On the debt side, when Andrea and I discussed in 50 years the digital euro, we need to have more capital market to be able to fund the banks and others. So, you know, the big focus has to be on that. The capital markets union. And the other point, because again, maybe I should have said this before, there will be questions from the audience at the end and also if you can send them online. So there's a part, however, that I do want to introduce because it was mentioned at the start of the session which had to do with, Stuart, you mentioned financial repression. One of the big topics this year, certainly that connects, well, everything we've talked about, the politics, the change in monetary policy, the higher rates has been the pushback that we've seen from a number of governments and jurisdictions this year with a number of bank tax that have been introduced. I wonder, and this I leave it to you, whether it has been a successful operation or not. And how would you describe this phenomenon that we've seen this year? Because some of these governments, even if it didn't really work in terms of the funding they were able to bring in, still defended us an idea. They say it was right to do it. Yeah, so it depends on how you define success. I mean, if success was finding 3 billion euros at two minutes to midnight, then I guess it was a success for those governments. But, I mean, it has repercussions. And in every investor discussion I have, it comes up. I think on the bank tax side, if you invest in European bank equities or credit, kind of, it comes with a territory, you know, crazy Europeans are gonna do crazy things every so often. You kind of expect it from the politicians to some extent. It's disappointing, but it's not totally unexpected. And you can do your homework in terms of which governments have the biggest problems and therefore it might be the bigger problem. I think the more corrosive issue this year has been the MRR, because you expect politicians to do weird things, but you don't necessarily expect financially literate central bankers to do weird things. And I think that the... You're a brave man. Sorry. But I think on the MRR, I mean, it's not been explained what exactly the purpose of that is. And you can say, okay, it's only a couple of billion euros and what does that matter? But when you have some central bankers talking about five to 10% MRRs, I mean, that is very corrosive, because if you're an investor in America, you don't know if that's a consensus view, if that's sort of at the margin of thinking. So I think it just is another factor which adds to the cost of equity of the sector. I wouldn't overstate it. There's other factors which are very important as well. But you kind of layer these things upon themselves. And it's another reason to not buy European equities and just go and buy J.P. Morgan because you're never gonna lose your job with your own J.P. Morgan shares. So why bother? Can I add something here? So maybe it's more a generic point. So in the end, I think that's important that it is good for economies if banks can grow and put their money back in economies. And that also means that you need to have banks that are valued properly and that make good returns. Because those good returns will filter back in, it will keep the banks safe, they will, the capital will go up, they can invest, et cetera. And for investors and the large, the majority of the, or the majority, 50% or the majority of the funds that are invested in European banks comes from the States or comes from American investors. And in the end, what these investors want is predictability and reliability. And things like in different countries, certain bank taxes, like in the Netherlands, with an outgoing cabinet, discussing a budget, and then on one day of the budget, a few people saying, hey, why don't we swap a few billions left, right, and center? Including a bank tax, that is just, it was not even tried to explain, just no, for budgetary reasons, increase the bank tax, which initially was there. And by the way, in the Netherlands, which is global, not even local, which is even more ridiculous, based on the fact that you want more safety at a time when banks were more dependent on one country, and ING was at that time seemed to be too big to fail, which you just even don't go back to the reasoning of that law anymore, and just feel like a tax gap, it's just not good. And it's just an example of the reliability or how investors will look at the reliability and predictability of the European governmental landscapes to see where they will invest, and we need to improve on that. For sure, Professor. Just following up on that, actually, if you look at how the bank, the tax on the bank profit has been introduced, is actually there is a big heterogeneity across countries. This is really surprising, both in the size of this tax, in the criteria for the application, for example, if you look at Ireland, it only applies to banks that have taken public support in the past. Sometimes it's one unatantum, sometimes it's more permanent tax, sometimes it varies a lot. So this increase also the unpredictability or the difficulty for an American investor to understand, because as he said, ultimately, American investor will look at the European banking sector. I'm not so sure how much they're actually able to distinguish each single country and to make predictions out of all these differences. And can I just, as a follow-up on this, Stuart, you said it depends on what you mean or how you define success. If three billion a minute to midnight is considered success, then it would have been successful. Some of these governments would say those three billions to my voters matter, so I think it was successful. It's clear from what you said that you think the damage is bigger than what's actually achieved, but just perhaps on, and to be fair, on a more perhaps intellectual basis, what some of these governments say is that it was objective that the pass-through was slow, and that then jumping into the spray accelerated this process. Is that fair or do you think, well, that's a weird excuse, maybe what turned out to be a bad market move? Well, I think that if you say the rationale for it was the banks were over-earning, I would say the banks are not over-earning. I think the banks went from under-earning and are now back to a level of more normal profitability. And I think to some of the way the bank taxes have been constructed are not set to really get to that answer of are they over-earning? Because if you're looking at revenues versus profits and all those kind of things, it creates some odd incentives. So I think if you look at Spain, if the argument was that was intended to lead Spanish banks to pay more to savers, it seems to have done the opposite. I think Spain has the lowest deposit beta in Europe right now. So you could argue it's just been a wealth transfer from Spanish savers to the Spanish treasury, and the banks have just been a pass-through mechanism. Arguably, if you wanted to reprice deposits, the better way of doing that was as Belgium did it, where you just go out with a very attractive one-year offer and 7% deposit base moves overnight. Which they say they did in response to this. So again, it was a different character and stick, but the rationale behind it was similar. Is it a problem of the execution then? But I guess the point is investors not cry babies. They tell us what the rules of the game are and we can price that risk effectively. It's when the rules of the game keep changing, there will be a knock-on impact in terms of the cost of equity. And if that's the price that you want to pay, fine, just be overt about it. Say, this is what we want to do. This is the ROE, the banking sector's allowed to generate. We have a utility. This is the ROE. We accept and anything above that belongs to us and anything below that belongs to you. But I think it's that lack of knowledge of the rules of the game, which leads to that cost of equity being unusually high, partly. And it is a banking supervision. Before we take into questions from the audience, I have to ask you, of course, about risks that you see it playing out in the medium to long-term perhaps. Mr. Boddy, I know you wanted to comment on this specifically, so I'm gonna give you this area. Yes, so we go back to the third but that I mentioned at the beginning. Yes. Actually, it ties in very closely with what we heard, but if you put it in the bigger context, and it's the fact that, and we had a special chapter in the annual economic report last year looking at the interaction between monetary and fiscal policy. If you look longer term, I think that the biggest risk to macroeconomic financial and price stability that we see is the trajectory of government debt. And the fact that initial conditions, and again, maybe people are not fully aware of this, were extraordinarily, well, let's say unprecedented again by historical standards. The, if you look across the world, and this is not just particular countries but across the world, the median level of the government debt to GDP ratio even before COVID was already at historical peaks. It was roughly at the same level in line with what we had seen during the Second World War. But of course, interest rates at the time were so low that the debt burden, the interest burden on the debt had never actually been so light in history. I mean, again, it's rather bizarre that people were, if you like, referring to that period as the new normal. If anything, it was, if you like, the new abnormal. And of course, now things have changed. And if you look ahead, if you look ahead, even with interest rates being below growth rates, and they are not now, the debt trajectory is extremely concerning. And that does not even include the new demands that we are putting on fiscal policy in terms, for example, of the green transition, more defense spending. And of course, the aging populations that typically are not taken into account in these numbers. And moreover, what I feel is that following the COVID crisis, which actually led to a further fiscal policy response, the general population has now got used to this strong support from the public sector. So the politics are going to be very much against getting these things under control. But if you look historically, and not least in this part of the world, I mean, the very high debt levels have created problems for financial stability, but also for macroeconomic stability and for inflation. And in a way, even the losses that we saw in the materialization of interest rate risk, were largely losses on public sector securities. And moreover, to complicate matters further, the fact that central banks have been buying quite a lot of that debt, at least in some jurisdictions, means that although you may think that that government debt is long maturities, if you consolidate the public sector debt and you consolidate it with the central bank, you will realize, and this again ties back to what we were discussing earlier, that a lot of that debt actually is at overnight rates. It's indexed at overnight rates because of bank reserves. That doesn't show up as high interest payments for the government, but shows up as lower revenues for the government. And of course, central bank losses that again creates a problem. So I think that going forward, I think we really have to watch out very closely the public sector side of the equation. Well, thank you for that, and Professor, of course. So as a chair of the risk committee, what I am most worried about, I think it's the same as supervisors are also worried about, which is waking up one morning or having any way sudden disruption somewhere in the system. I think this is what really keeps me awake at night if you want to ask me that question, if you can say that question. So anything that has to do with geopolitical risk at the moment, for example, which is not related to interest rate, but of course this can be a very sudden disruption. And related to that a little bit, all the sanction regimes actually become more and more aware of the legal risk that we may be facing. Because banks anyway rely on the rule of law contracts for certain operations, but in times of wars, maybe the rule of law is not always applied in the way we would predict. And that also can impose substantial losses on banks. So that is what I'm worried most about. So when I have my meetings, what I keep saying is what if question, how do we actually manage this potential tail risk? And of course banks cannot, and probably should not start acting, thinking that there may be this tail risk, but they should be ready to act that should this risk materialize. So stress testing I think is something that we need to put a lot of emphasis on. And it's not necessarily the stress test, the DBA, the ECB conduct, but it's internal stress testing of the banks. So banks do much more stress testing than regulatory stress testing is concerned. So going back to Mr. Bard this morning, liquidity stress testing, assumption in behavioral model of deposits, we know very little about it. So these are what the emphasis that I personally would put right now very highly. So I share very much one of the latest speeches of Andrea when he was saying going forward, this is not just about capital, this is about supervision, being preventive on one side of a more detective and corrective measure. I think that is really what met us the most. And as Mr. Bard was remembering us this morning, it's a matter of Credit Suisse, Silicon Valley Bank, they're not coming out of nothing. They are coming out of a period of weaknesses that have not been solved. So this is I think where the focus should be going forward, rather than regulation or increase capital in itself. Thank you for that. And Jean-Pierre, I... No, I fully agree with what Elena said. I think there are well-known risks in the banking sector. You mentioned some, you mentioned some as well. I think there are two risks which are new to a certain extent. We see the liquidity risk because of the change of behaviors. And he was very well explained this morning as well. And that's something which is very difficult to model. First of all, and we have models which are changing because of that, basically the customers are changing. And we have not mentioned cyber risk. And the chair of an IT company as well, which provides very good cyber services, actually if you would like to use them. But the cyber side is what was keeping me awake at night actually. And if the system is blocked for whatever reason, for one day a bank can handle. For two days it becomes difficult. And for three days you don't have any more problem because you don't have the bank anymore. So I think the cyber risk and management of cyber risk on the payment side, it's a payment issue first of all, is something which has to be looked at extremely, is being looked at. But the cyber thieves or criminals are very innovative. And so it is a new risk which has to be looked at very, very carefully. Well, thank you for that. Unless there's further comments, I will now switch to the audience and maybe we can take questions from them. So if you have a question, just introduce yourself and put the question. Thank you very much. Nicolas Veron at Bruggele and Peterson Institute. I cannot resist expanding on what Elena said about referring to Jacques de Lausier's remarks yesterday, which were also taken up by Andrea in remarks yesterday night. The position of the banking industry in terms of the completion of banking union, and I guess Jean-Pierre gave us his opinion already, but my question is to stir up then Mr. Van Rijswijk. Why is it that large European banks, or at least a critical mass of large European banks, are not pushing more for completion of banking union, giving the strategic advantages that appear blindingly obvious to most of us here? Thank you. We are, we're just not very successful. That's reality. So I think that's for years. We have been talking with the European Parliament and the European Commission and with our own political leaders in the countries. There are a number of challenges, which is also in the sovereignty of the countries, people feeling that why should we merge our deposits with those of some other countries and if then bankruptcy laws in countries differ, what would that mean in terms of my deposits then going to deposits or going to make up for holes that are being put as from other countries? So there is still a big divide between different countries in what they feel who should pay the bill if something goes wrong. And at least, let me speak for myself, I have not been sufficiently successful to change that opinion. I think from my perception, I think the industry is split. I think some CEOs see value and some CEOs don't. And the counterfactual of just buying back your stock, it's a no-brainer. I mean, if you have to explain to a skeptical investor why you're doing a cross-border deal, which you know they won't like, versus just buying back your shares where there's zero execution risk, that's a very high hurdle. And for you to be able to sum out that hurdle, you need, I think, some sort of narrative shift to say this is why it now makes sense. The obvious narrative shift, whether it would be real or not, but in terms of giving you that air cover would be Edis, I agree with Jean-Pierre, that's never gonna happen. So from that perspective, kind of I think the industry finds itself somewhat hamstrung. Now I take the point, the industry could be the leader and could make the case to the politicians as to why Edis should happen. But I think if you secretly polled CEOs of European banks, I think you'd get a split jury on whether they actually believe that or not. Maybe I'm wrong. And I heard someone here, and I think it was you, and I know who said, but why? Do you want, do you want it? So maybe you want to... Actually, I wish we could integrate the two panels. I'm speaking afterwards. Sorry. No, I mean, it is an instinct to say, you said, yeah, Edis is never gonna happen. And this is exactly the attitude. Why it's not happening? Because it's everybody, it's so giving up on this, and I can assure you that's not true because what we've seen in these past five years in the parliament and in the European Union is that we are capable of doing things that were not imaginable even few months earlier. So when there is the political will, and by political will it's not only the will of some politicians, the political will and the political power rests in all the actors, and the banking sector has a much bigger political power that they're wishing to admit. The issue is that how do you spend your political power? So I've met quite a few of you in these years, and I know how passionate you can be when you have to advocate something. So it's just that you have to direct your passion and your energy towards something that is also long-term, strategic, and that help us because us in parliament and in the commission, you've acknowledged that we do everything we can to try to push in these projects. They think that, you know, I don't wanna point fingers, I don't wanna do name, shame, and blah, blah, blah, but you know what I'm referring and who I'm referring to and where you have to direct your passionate advocacy for a more integrated banking sector. So honestly, when you say it's not gonna happen, it is gonna happen if you help us if we can all work together because we've done things that were inimaginable and if you look back, you know that we've done that. Sorry. Aiden, thank you so much, and forgive me for... But I heard you go, why? So I thought I had to. Just to thank you very much for this passionate lead for Edis, let's assume it happens. I don't think it's going to change anything about bank merger and integration and creating pan-European champions because there's no rational and there's no synergy on the retail banking side between different countries. So we can say whatever we want to say, it's not going to work. And that, I mean, I have a very high level of certainty that it might help, but not very much and there are other things that bankers should do. What is super important is to work on the capital market union, not on what the commission has been doing, but on making sure that we can have more investors to buy European shares and European debt. This is what is putting us back per the US side. You mentioned that the largest part of shareholders of European banks, like on many European shares, are non-European. And that's a problem for economies which are the same size basically. So if we had to do something important for Europe to promote growth, to fund companies on the equity side or the gross equity side or debt side, it's much more on the investor side that we need to focus. So we'll be back for the next panel. So I think maybe we'll give the mic, but after. If there's, are there any more questions from the audience? This is the final one that we're going to be able to take because we're running out of time. So yes. Hi, thanks. Giovanni Bassani from the ECB. Mr. Mostiere, a really very passing minister. I mean, if you wait for everybody speaking the same language, I think that's really not, never gonna happen. To Mr. Varanski, there is one issue that I've always been curious about. Why do we have J.P. Morgan, Societas Europea, Morgan Stadley, Societas Europea? You don't transform yourself in a Societas Europea. And so you have this problem at least of fragmentation and compartmentalization of capital and liquidity will disappear. So we need to have, I would say, high-end J. Societas Europea, like we have Goldman Sachs, Societas Europea, or Nicaragua, Societas Europea. Why that does not happen? At least it will be a first step and you can do it without any legality changes or treaty changes whatsoever. Thank you. It's a good point, because I was almost gonna say in the whole Edis discussion, thank you, by the way, for your passion. I shared it, by the way. Is that indeed the fact that if we would move to flag 150 kilometers eastbound from Amsterdam to somewhere in Germany, Gelsenkirchen for like air, we just put it there, then that changes my macro-prudential buffers. That's just, and nothing changed. And so why are we doing this to each other? But that's just one element of it. On this Association European, that is a possibility, but if you already have activities in different markets with subs, that you cannot suddenly, but it's gonna become a very technical and legal story, transform just in an European association like the American banks have done. For new activities, by the way, this is a very good one, so it will, it can help to some extent, but it will not take away everything that we just talked about. Well, thank you for that. We have reached the end of the session, but before we leave, Mr. Henriette, well, there's a message for you, and it's Jean-Pierre Moustier who's gonna deliver it. Then this is going to be more optimistic about something that will happen. Well, I am optimistic for the banking sectors, but not only this, but that's another story. Let's now go back to that, there's another panel. Only I was tasked by the panel to say thank you. And I would like to say thank you, not only on behalf of the panel, but also for the years where we worked together when I was at the European Banking Federation, specifically the few months where we were in lockdown and we were discussing stopping the dividend, and we had this very close interaction, and I discovered the human being behind the regulator, basically. And I think that we owe you immense thanks for what you have been doing for the banking sector. And what I'm saying immense is the future generation we'll see and we'll realize what you've been doing, which is unbelievably good. So thank you very much for that. And when I'm here and speaking to all your team members, the respect they have, but more importantly, the proud that we see with all the members of DSM to be working at DSM speaks a lot for what you have achieved. And I think you did something absolutely extraordinary. And so thank you very much for that. And I would like to, of course, pass our best wishes to your successor and wish her best success as well for very interesting days of EDIS, digital banking, FinTech and others. That's what we're going to see. So good luck to you and thank you very much to Andrea. Thank you. Thank you.