Let me just start off by asking you what brings you to Abu Dhabi. I mean, clearly your presence in the region has picked up since the merger. Talk to us about your expansion efforts in the Middle East.
But, of course, the Abu Dhabi Finance Week is a great opportunity to be here and reconfirm our commitment to this region, which is fast growing. I think that's... We have five trillions of assets. You know, it's growing faster than Europe. It's very fascinating to see what's going on here. So it's a great opportunity.
Yeah. And the last couple of months, I've been speaking to other bank CEOs, some of your American peers, and they've also been talking about establishing RHQs in Saudi Arabia. Are you also thinking about expanding beyond the UAE and into other parts of the Middle East as well, maybe Saudi Arabia, too?
Well, we are quite well positioned in the region and we have operations in other than in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, but also in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in Qatar and in Bahrain. So I think that for the time being, what we are focused on is integration of the Credit Suisse and UBS operations. We have reinforced our presence here. So that's the main priority is to really connect the Middle East with the rest of the global franchise.
Yeah, talking about the integration of your business, next year is going to be a big one because you've got the migration, the data migration happening in Switzerland. I know you started in Hong Kong already. How worried are you about how that's all going to go in 2025?
So things are moving well after Luxembourg, Singapore, Hong Kong. Switzerland is going to be the next phase we are migrating under and then to buy some data which one petabyte is five hundred billion A4 pages. So that's quite complex. I'm worried in a healthy way. You know, we want to be worried about such a technical migration, but we are well prepared. So this is the last half of the second half of the migration, and then hopefully in the early part of 2026, we're going to be fully operational under one platform.
Yeah. And as far as the integration is going, just looking at everything, I mean, you're more than half of the way there on cost savings. It really does feel as though, as far as you're concerned, things are moving in line with the path that you had set out.
Yes, I think that I'm very pleased with the progress we've made. Also on restructuring the balance sheet and repositioning the business. And most importantly, we did all that by staying close to clients, also delivering solid results in the last few quarters. And so we will now really focus on the next phase, which is growth. After this integration, we're going to want to grow and we start to invest in technology and making sure that we are well prepared for the future.
Are you worried that maybe one of the byproducts of all of this data mitigation and client migration — sorry, data migration, I should say — that one of the byproducts could be you could potentially lose clients in the process.
I mean, we take all the necessary steps to make sure that this is not happening. So I'm, you know, the team is well prepared, very, very focused. So I'm not overly concerned about that in my term. But, you know, there is no room for complacency in those kind of migrations.
Yeah, the Swiss government's about to publish the findings on the investigation into the takeover of Credit Suisse. Are you bracing yourself for the results of those findings and anything that you will be anticipated to do on the back of it?
I'm looking forward to see that report. We hope the necessary transparency will be provided on the reasons why Credit Suisse went down. We do believe it's absolutely crucial to fully understand that before moving into any changes of regulations or any steps that could undermine the competitiveness of the financial centre.
Do you worry that perhaps Switzerland is moving to a place where the regulation may be over onerous versus other jurisdictions around the world?
Yes, I am. But on the other hand, I'm still hopeful that some reasoning and proportion, a proportionate outcome will come out, will prevail. That's, I have to say, for the time being, I'm hearing less facts and more emotions driving the debate and hopefully things are going to cool off in the next few months.
