Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SEB Financial Results Q1 2026 Webcast and Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

Please advise that this call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Johan Torgeby, President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Johan Torgeby
President, CEO & Director

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to SEB's first quarter results presentation. First, I'd like to just comment on a pretty unusual quarter. We've clearly seen some turbulent times with some macroeconomic sharp turns during the first quarter of this year. After a very constructive start in January, February, we had the trigger of the military conflict in the Middle East where we saw interest rate expectation significantly increased following higher energy prices and the risk of higher inflation, fairly sharp drops in some of the equity markets and also a widening of credit spreads.

What's good to see is that April has really contrasted to this development and things have clearly stabilized. The highlights of the first quarter is really around the sentiment that ended positively and came out weaker during March after stabilizing in April. We saw some areas