 Good afternoon, I hope you had a nice lunch and we are now looking forward to sharing with you our perspectives on geopolitics and global trade. What can be done today? And we wanted to share with you what we believe is an interesting corporate perspective on where global trade will go. I am being joined by an illustrious panel, which I will introduce in a few minutes. And I'd like to kick us off with just three, four slides on how we see the world evolving. Introducing myself, my name is Nikolaus Lang. I'm a senior partner at BCG, the Boston Consulting Group. I'm leading BCG's Global Advantage practice, which is dedicated to geopolitics and trade and international collaboration. So, when you advise corporate leaders, what is one of the most striking changes I have observed in the last five years, is that the way how corporate leaders think about their business is moving away from a mono-dimensional perspective of the future to a multi-dimensional perspective of the future. And that means that corporate leaders ask us about what are the scenarios of the future? How does the world in 2030 look like? And so, based on this, we have developed a few scenarios which we believe could describe the future. The first scenario is a scenario which is called Back to the Future. The scenario Back to the Future is a scenario which is kind of reimagining the world we knew from 1990s to 2000, a world geared towards free trade, a world where the Bretton Boots system and institutions were working, still working, and companies that were actually seeing the world as relatively flat. Remember, it's the time when Francis Fukuyama was speaking about the end of history. The second scenario is what we would call the limited stalemate, which is a continuation of the conflict in Eastern Europe between Russia and Ukraine, and we have Minister Kuleba speaking to us later in the afternoon. And of course, there's a view of saying, given the static front line, given major elections in Russia, Ukraine, and US next year, this war is not likely to end very soon. Then there's a third scenario, which is called multipolar competition, a scenario where we see an increasing emergence of three groups, and I'm not saying blocks deliberately, I'm not saying blocks. First, a Western group was US, EU, and some of Allies in the Indo-Pacific. Second, an Eastern block and group between China and Russia and some Allied countries, ranging from North Korea to Belarus. And then a third group of countries, which is not recreating the movement of the non-Alliance, but which shows that they want to be at equal distance between these two groups, and this is of course first and foremost India, Indonesia, but also countries in this region and in Africa. And then there's a fourth scenario, which a lot of corporate leaders always ask us about, which is actually the global escalation. And I think we discussed about this potential of a global escalation just before lunch, and of course that would be the addition of a war in the Indo-Pacific to the current conflicts we see around the world. So these are four scenarios. Now the beauty with scenarios is that they are precisely wrong, but generally right. Now when we look at the scenarios going forward, the key question is where do we see the future and what is the most likely scenario? Going through these four scenarios, we definitely see a loss of steam when it comes to the back to the future scenarios. Look at the CHIPS Act, look at IRA, look at the challenges we heard also this morning around WTO. So having a world in 2030 that is similar to what we had around the 1990s and 2000s is at least from our perspective relatively unlikely. Second, the limited stalemate. We have seen movements in the last 12 months with increased Western aid in Ukraine, although stalled now. President Zelensky several times in the US and a clear focus on continuing this war. However, we are in a war of attrition. Did you know that last year we had tens of thousands of kilometers won from both sides? While if you accumulate the movement of the armies in the last nine months, no side has won more than 1,000 square kilometers. So the fact that we have a static front line. Probably this war will at least continue for the next 12 to 18 months if you look at the elections that stand before us. Ukraine, Russia, US. So this is something that will definitely impact us for the next years to come, although hopefully we will reach some kind of ceasefire negotiations in the next years to come. So the dominant scenario is a scenario of the multipolar world. And when you look at what has happened in the last 12 months, a lot of signals go in this direction. It's a multipolar world where we have President Xi traveling to Moscow in March, President Putin traveling to Beijing last month. We have the emergence of the bricks and the expansion of the bricks. We have a strong development around the world of an independent thinking beyond the two blocks we are looking at. And last but not least in this multipolar world, we have also seen the emergence of old conflicts in the last few weeks. Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kosovo, Serbia and of course Israel-Gaza. So all this development show that the multipolar world is probably the highly scenario for 2030. On global escalation, we are a little bit more cautious because we believe that global escalation at this stage, given economic development, military unreadiness, is less likely to happen. So what does this mean for business? Well, I come with a half positive news. When you look at the left hand side of this chart, you see the development of global trade in the next 10 years. The good news is that global trade will grow by 2.3% per year. You tell me, well, that's actually not bad. Well, under the scenario back to the future, between 1990 and 2010, trade was growing 7% per year. So we are at less than one-third of the growth. So yes, we are growing, but we are not growing as fast as we would grow in a free trade world. Plus, geopolitics impact how trade routes evolve. Now I'm coming to a complex slide and it's my last slide, but I want to share with you a few of these trade routes. There are trade routes that will go massively down. Obviously the trade route between Russia and you goes down by more than 200 billion euros, which is due to all the energy sanctions we see here. But we see also a trade route between China and US going down. And obviously we see also that the Brexit has proven not very useful for the UK. Then you have trade routes that grow, the yellowish ones, grow but grow slowly, under proportionally. And the most interesting thing is that all the really strong trade routes are in the global south. This is the picture of the future where you see that $1 trillion additional trade is emanating from Southeast Asia. You see that India is playing an important role, but you also see that the North Atlantic trade is booming considerably. And you could flatly say that the Europeans are replacing Russian pipeline gas by North American LNG. I think this is oversimplified, but you see a shift of trade going on. And looking at the winners next to Southeast Asia, look at where Mexico stands. Mexico is the big winner of nearshoring and French shoring in this world. So let me conclude before I move to the panel. What do we see for corporate leaders? We see five no-regret moves. First, make sure that you diversify your supply chains. The word I hear most in boardrooms currently is China plus one or China plus two, which means what is the alternative to China both as a market and as a supply chain. Second, enhance your navigational ability in a world of price volatility and inflation. Third, prepare your organization to work in different worlds. Do you need an organization for China and one organization for India and one for Europe? The time where one headquarter was running the world is definitely over. Fourth, look at turbocharging risk and cyber security. And last but not least, build the geopolitical muscle in the corporate boardroom. So in order to further develop this geopolitical muscle, I'm very pleased to join this great panel with whom I'll have the pleasure to discuss over the next hour the impact of geopolitics and global trade on the corporate boardrooms. So I'll start with a brief introduction and then we'll go with the statements. So I'm joined by Penny next to me who is with the Atlantic Council. Penny, you were before that 10 years at UPS taking care of international affairs, before that at Citicorp and before in the US administration. We talked a lot about your perspective on how will trade change. I think you have a very also interesting perspective on the two last US administration. And we look forward to hearing you view which one was more beneficial for trade. Theo, you have been Korea's Minister of Trade in the early 2010s. You have been active in the actively promoting trade. You have also been professor and dean at the Korea National University and you are now advising companies in this all trade environment. Nicola, you are with Total Energy. You started also in the French administration and then joined Total Energy 22 years ago. You are now president of the whole production and exploration activities. You have been in many different countries working in places like Nigeria, Myanmar, Qatar. And we discussed also in our preparation that you see a big power of your business and your industry to really look at the development and building bridges going forward. And Jay, you have been at the Navy. You have been diplomat in places like Pakistan and many other places. And you have then moved to consulting and you are now heading veracity worldwide which is a global geopolitical consultancy and risk consultancy. And we have also the pleasure to work together on some instances. So this is the group and let me go maybe in the order of the panel we have here with the perspectives that this group has on geopolitics and trade.