Sergio Ermotti

Well, look, you know,

This is something that is not really new.

I mean, the priorities for the central government around innovation, being technology or pharma, biotech and so on, has been there for a while.

So from our standpoint of view, what we are helping is local clients, but also foreign clients to really select the winners.

I think it's quite impressive how

the Chinese companies are able not only to be a fast follower, but in some cases setting new standards for incumbents in the US.

So from my standpoint of view, this is a big story to stay with us where we're going to see probably Chinese companies creating new frontiers of innovation rather than being a follower.

Well, I have to say before year end I was in Japan and after 30 years of, you know, I felt for the first time a renewed sense of optimism across the board, you know, corporates, institutional investor, governments, regulatory bodies looking in a much more positive ways about the future.

So I think Japan is the third largest wealth management market in the world.

in terms of savings.

And it's quite clear to me that now that rates are coming up and there is a new paradigm that is there to stay with us.

And I do believe that also there you will see Japanese corporates probably looking to deploy more assets outside Japan, but also a renewed interest from foreign investors into Japan.

Well, across the board, in our core businesses, I mean, outside Switzerland, I mean, de facto, the three core activities in wealth management, we have a very successful joint venture with Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank.

and that is growing and we want to foster more in the investment bank, of course in the investment banking in ECM and M&A, reinforcing our presence in equities and in research where we are a leader in generally in Asia and last but not least in the asset management business.

So what we're going to do by the end of this first quarter, we're going to migrate the balance of around 15% of the clients in Switzerland into the UBS platform.

At that point in time, all clients globally will be on a UBS system, on a UBS platform.

Then we're going to start to shut down IT centers, data centers, and

the fact in Switzerland we are still maintaining and running two separate IT systems.

So, shutting down that one will create the synergies, real estate footprint and

And to some extent, unfortunately, also some personnel reduction that will continue to stay within what we announced in terms of proactive redundancy.