Ladies and Gentlemen, In these competitive and challenging times, excellence in marketing capabilities, innovative and efficient distribution network, product development capabilities and customer relationship and care require the ability to harness these different competencies, formulate a coherent enterprise-wide strategy, that is then executed effectively. For that to happen, banks have to look within their organisations for the answers. Before resources are allocated, before a marketing direction and strategy is established, before the organisation is restructured, the bank needs to decide what its strategic business will be within the context of its markets - exactly what type of financial service provider it will be. As part of the efforts to enhance efficiency and thus alleviate the level of competitiveness, significant strategies were initiated during the year. This included the consolidation, the rationalisation of common functions and operations across institutions in the group, outsourcing of non-core activity and leveraging on cross- selling of the products and services within the group. Following the consolidation of the 54 domestic banking institutions into ten banking groups, there was significant rationalisation of the wide range of common functions and operations across institutions in the group. Six banking groups have also now leveraged on cross-selling of their products and services across institutions in the group. A further impetus towards achieving this would be the merging of the commercial banking and finance company businesses in the banking group into one single entity.

Only with a deep, liquid market is it possible to launch IPOs of successful projects that can offset the losses with projects that fail. Harmonising insolvency rules across jurisdictions would be a major step towards supporting capital markets. This is critical for mobilising finance through capital markets, as it would create incentives and favourable conditions for institutional investors to overcome the home bias in their investment strategies. This is especially true for pension investment, as large private pension funds tend to be a complement to deep capital markets. We need to establish a harmonised regulatory environment for new types of finance, such as crowd funding. The emergence of increasingly complex financial products needs to be accompanied by adequate consumer protection of financial investment, in order to safeguard financial stability and ensure the protection of individual investors. The second component of a comprehensive approach entails policies that will stimulate entrepreneurship. High-tech entrepreneurial firms that aspire to go public should be supported and facilitated by stock exchanges specialising in IPOs for young innovative companies. A reduction in the wedge between corporate income taxes and personal income taxes has already been shown to have a strong positive effect on high-tech investment in a European context.21 Last but not least, the efficient application of R&D tax incentives and increased public funding of private research universities, whose labs often make key scientific and technological breakthroughs, are other important avenues for stimulating innovation and the commercialisation of science. Conclusion Let me conclude.