Banque Cantonale Vaudoise

Okay. Good morning, everybody. Pascal Tiner, CEO of VCV speaking. Let me jump directly on page four to comment what I consider are the key messages of our H1 results. Basically, VCV is doing quite well with the continued growth in all business sectors. Revenue are slightly up despite the negative or the low interest rate environment due to our business model, which is quite diversified, the most diversified type of revenues of all continental banks due to private banking and asset management. And then in this uncertainty world and also in this environment of, let's say, very low interest rates, we try to master and to control very tightly our cost and you see that the overall cost, meaning the patent cost or patent expense as well as amortization, are up only 1%. Basically, this results in a net profit of 5% compared to last year, 225 million Swiss francs.

Then I go directly on page six.

You see the different... Business, volume, mortgage, order loans, deposits, so everything is up. In terms of deposits, you have to add the two elements, side deposit and other kind of deposits. In aggregate, this is plus 3%. Okay. In terms of rating, being financial or extra financial, ESG rating, so financial rating, Moody's and S&P are confirmed there. their rating, which is okay. We didn't expect anything else, but I think it's good to say that. And in terms of ESG rating, you see that the notation, the ratings of BCV are quite good. Very often on the second highest rating for the different agencies and almost everywhere the best continental bank or among the best in terms of extra energy rating. This is basically the result of a long-term focus on government issue durability. This hasn't started in the last three, four years, but we started before 2010. Basically, it's written in the continental law about BCV that we should care about durability on such issues. Now, back to business. Retail banking, you see that the volumes are up, which is a normal growth. We have a target of roughly 4% for the mortgage business on a yearly basis. 2% we are on track. And customer deposit, this is good. We were surprised by this number. I was expecting a bit less, but this is good. And in terms of revenue-making profit, this is due to the international pricing model. You know, the time being, the The savings, I mean, the zero interest rates, basically, is already favorable for the recent banking. Basically, the profit goes to the corporate center. Okay. Corporate banking, here we have always two different shapes, different segments. You have the small-middle enterprise. Focus is Canton Vaud. 2% loan up and they put stable. The point I would like to make here is the COVID-19 bridge loans. I hope you're all familiar with what it was. It was a facility offered by the Swiss banking system of banks to cooperate in Switzerland where the banks would provide the liquidity but the risk would be taken by the Swiss Confederation. So this started during the COVID crisis and a couple of years later, what can we say? We can say that 93% are paid back, 83% by the customer, and 8% by the guarantee cooperative, which is basically the extension of the Swiss Confederation. Now, why am I mentioning that? Because if you assume that the rest, the 7% between 1993 and 100% would also be completely lost, not for BCV, for banks, but for the Swiss corporation, that would add up to 8 plus 7, 15%. When the program was developed a couple of years ago, we assumed 20 to 25% loss that means basically that the Swiss economy and the Vaud I think those numbers are the number for Vaud but they should be very similar in other countries the Swiss economy is doing quite well has been doing well in the last 5 to 6 years because all those companies were able to pay back their loan 85% at least probably more I don't expect that the 93% to 100% or the 7% the rest 7% would all be We lost probably 5% out of 7, but not more than that. So that shows that the economy is doing not too badly. Real estate is up. Large corporates, this is always up and down, depending on pricing and depending also on the window dressing at the end of June. Trade finance, maybe one comment here. You know the geopolitical issues. and here we still we are still very cautious presence in this area even more after the geopolitical troubles in the Middle East so we don't expect to grow this business in the next two to three years unless suddenly the US Iran war is solved which I don't believe and the same for the war between Russia and Ukraine, which also don't believe that it will be solved in the next, let's say, one to two years. And in terms of credit risk, again, this is the same story as for the COVID bridge loan. The economy is quite resilient. We are very limited number of new provision of new credit risk for the SME business in or the corporate business in the Swiss overall. Wealth management, again, those are aggregate figures. Here you have the Pratt Banking of the model company. You have also the institutional asset management business of the model company. You have Piguet-Gallon, which is our small subsidiaries focused on Pratt Banking, and also Gérifon, which is a kind of fund administration company. So those numbers are already all up, but we should give more detail that we don't want to give to be able to assess exactly what's going on at each level. Anyway, trading slightly up, I mean, 35, 36, I mean, this is more or less the same. Again, I repeat, this is a client-induced trading, customer-induced trading, There is no prop trading here. This is mostly Forex. And also, there is strong extension in the structured product volume. This is clear that our rating, S&P and Moody's rating, helped quite a lot in terms of being able to sell structured products to customers, being retail customers or private-ranking customers or external asset managers or other small banks. Okay, first of all, in a way, the business part. And over to Thomas for the final shot present.