Sohrab Movahedi: Okay. And so maybe the bigger question really, Victor. I think a couple of times, you have mentioned repositioning and it’s a messy quarter. There is lots of stuff that I don’t know is not uncommon to have in the fourth quarter, you increased the dividend. Can you kind of zoom it out and just remind us what you see the earnings power of the bank, please?
Victor Dodig: Sure, Sohrab. Thank you for your question. So, this quarter doesn’t really reflect the earnings power of the bank. If I look back at the full year, I think that reflects the earnings power of the bank. Our revenue growth led peers over the course of the year. Our pre-provision earnings growth led peers over the course of the year. What was distinctive about our strategy is that we went into fiscal 2022 continuing with our investment agenda. We invested in a large credit card portfolio. We grew our retail client base by 25%. We continue to grow market share in capital markets in commercial banking, in the U.S. We continue to focus on the affluent client segment, when it comes to wealth management and personal banking.
So, all of those markers which we see as key indicators, are working really, really well. If we are a private company, we continue to invest at those levels. But we are a public company. We have recognized the economy is shifting. We need to deliver constructive operating leverage to our shareholders. So, we are pivoting. And this quarter is a bit of a pivot quarter. This does not reflect the full earnings power of CIBC. We feel very good about the investments that we have made. We feel that we will get scale and leverage on those investments. And as I have said in my remarks, we have made our compensation investments. It’s a competitive market. We don’t want our own team to be left behind, and we have made significant strategic investments that now we are at a point where you are going to see benefit as we head into 2023.
Sohrab Movahedi: Okay. Thank you.
Operator: Mihelic RBC Capital Markets. So, Mr. Mihelic, your line is open. You may proceed with your question.
Darko Mihelic: Hi. I apologize. Good morning everyone. I just wanted to key in a little bit more perhaps if I may on the net interest margin and sort of what we are seeing. And forgetting the segmented for a moment, getting back to Mario’s question with respect to the sort of view in the short-term, can I just ask what was the deciding factor in this quarter that sort of you have increased your liquidity portfolio. Looks like you increased and you took in a lot of deposits in the quarter. Can you just describe for me the thought process behind building liquidity in this quarter at a very high cost? And sorry, and what does that mean going forward? Does this mean that we should expect CIBC to continue to build liquidity going forward in this uncertain environment? And is that going to be a further drag?
Hratch Panossian: Yes. Thank you for your question, Darko. Look, I would say that the liquidity build this quarter was predominantly and you keyed on it, right, due to our success on deposits. We continue to be focused on serving our clients’ needs, both sides of the balance sheet, balance growth. And as you know, deposits €“ cost of funding on deposits is preferable to cost of funding in the wholesale markets, particularly when you have seen wholesale costs go up on the longer end, 100 basis points or so on credit spreads of banks, on the shorter end, about half of that. And so the margins on deposits and the incremental funding cost benefit that deposits have, whether they are term or indeterminate maturity to wholesale funding, is larger today than it is.
And so we have been focused on deposit growth. We have been serving clients on that side and had good deposit success. And that built up some excess liquidity, and that gets deployed over time. It just takes a little bit of time for us to deploy it. And so in the short-term, it becomes excess liquidity. I would not anticipate us continuing to build excess liquidity. Our focus is on deploying those deposits to support clients, to grow our strategy and to grow our margins. And over time, you have seen that, right. You have seen our NII at the total bank level, up 12% year-over-year this year. And that’s what we are focused on. We will continue growing NII. Margins overall, as I have said, we will have a positive trajectory as we go forward. Deposits will keep coming, loans will keep coming, and there is a little bit of sometimes timing mismatch between those two things.
