Fani Titi
Group CEO & Executive Director

Good morning. It's our pleasure to welcome you to this results presentation. We're coming to you today from London offices, and we're really looking forward to presenting our business to you.

Just as I start, it is clear that we are operating in a very challenged environment. Geopolitics has dominated markets for quite some time. And we also know that we are in a period where there is substantial change that is occasioned by artificial intelligence. So we see great volatility and yet our business has been able to produce resilient results. So I'm really grateful to my colleagues for the work that they have done over the last period.

In times of volatility, it is important that we hold high levels of capital and high levels of liquidity. Liquidity may be expensive, but it is important that we continue to be conservative in our positioning. This enables us, firstly, to continue to support our clients, but also to reinvest in the business. As indicated from last year, we are in a heightened investment period, choosing to have faith in the future by investing today for a larger, better business for our clients. So we've been making steady progress on our investment program. And later today, we will give you a peak into our Private Client business. And importantly, we also will give you a brief update on our corporate mid-market business and the progress we have made since we made the announcement last year. We look forward to do that in the second half of the day.