 Good morning, reaccellencies, good morning for the welcome for the 9th Urban Age Conference. I think seeing the weather yesterday and today, I'm very much in favour of climate change. You see, it's wonderful changing and I think you should be very careful, this climate change is a wonderful city today. Before I start, I have to ask you kindly to switch off your multiple mobile phones because everything is recorded and it's very complicated for recording if you have mobile phones. And for announcing the first speaker, I may just say a word to the ambassador of Spain to Turkey. It was in Barcelona where we had a very small Mayors conference and he was our host and it was in Barcelona hosting our conference where we had the idea, the idea of Urban Age was born and a special welcome to you and thank you for coming. You are the sort of founding father of this big event. Another great honour to announce Dr Akamah Mithy, CEO of Deutsche Bank. It's a very important post but the most important job is he's chairman of the board of the Alcatel Society. Dr Akamah, please. Governor Serra, Professor Davis, our reaccellencies, dear guests, dear friends, I would rather say that we have so many now gathered here who are almost addicts to the Herrhaus Society at the Urban Age Conference and it gives me therefore tremendous pleasure to open the ninth Urban Age Conference today in this beautiful city, Istanbul. In this hall we can really experience the fascination behind this city. It's a magnificent past, enthralling present but also the intimations of the future. We are surrounded by a baroque mosque, a synagogue and a Christian church. We can see the historic old town and a modern bridge that links Asia with Europe. Our conference city is almost 3,000 years old and has always been a major commercial, cultural and intellectual centre. It is the oldest urban age city and the birthplace of Turkey's dynamic economic renewal. London and Istanbul are Europe's only mega cities. Since 2005, the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhaus Society have been investigating the world's big cities. I didn't know actually it's probably a pure coincidence when Deputy Prime Minister Ali Baba Chan said yesterday that Turkish airline is now flying to Mumbai and to Sao Paulo out of Istanbul. So it seems to be the Turkish airline is really following the path of the Alfred Herrhaus Society. Cities are the places where globalization can be experienced by ordinary citizens every day. All the world's problems are condensed into one area. In our cities we see the first, second and the third world simultaneously. Only when cities are successful is a country in which they are situated also successful. Of course cities will continue to grow in the 21st century. Towards the end of this century, as I said last night, 75 percent of the world's people will live in cities. And the crucial questions we therefore face are what kind of cities do we want to live in, as well as how and where we want to live? Through its presence in the world's financial centers Deutsche Bank has become part of their urban development. We are at home in more than 70 countries and the corporate citizen in all of them in Turkey now for exactly 100 years. We know that we can only be successful in cities that are successful themselves. It has therefore been a long-standing tradition for Deutsche Bank to become actively involved with its cities. The London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhaus Society joined forces with partners from all over the world to shape the urban age so it does not overwhelm us all. We have undertaken nothing more and nothing less than to bring together the most diverse experiences in our conferences to develop a template for the success of big cities. Together with the London School of Economics and the cities in which we have had and will have conferences we will tackle this challenge in the coming years. There are many mayors in this hall and we know how difficult your office has become. If you want to lead the city successfully and let me add if you want to lead a country or maybe even a company successfully you must be able to manage opposites. To do this you must be willing to learn from each other and that is why we are here today. Ladies and gentlemen I wish you a most productive conference. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Ackerman.