Jane Fraser: Yeah, look, around the world, the corporate client base and our commercial banking mid-market client base have very healthy balance sheets. And we’re also seeing market access gradually opening up as well, which is also helpful for the quality issuers across all asset classes. We’ve seen both the issuers taking advantage as well as the investors. The deals are well oversubscribed. So that’s also been beneficial as corporates think about their financing needs. The other piece I just pop out there as well is the recent large M&A announcements in multiple industries is a sign of rising confidence from CEOs and Boards. And active discussions are increasing as supportive capital markets create confidence as people think about larger strategic transactions.
This is going to feed acquisition finance, bridge financing, and some of the higher margin capital markets and lending activity as well. So as we look forward, I think it’s recognizing the shift in some of the drivers from companies just investing, refinancing, looking at where they can, diversifying their capital, raising in different quarters. But I just close by saying, I couldn’t agree with you more about geopolitical risks and fragility. I think the market’s too — but it’s too benign in its risk pricing on some of these factors.
Mark Mason: Important for us to take …
Operator: Our next question is from Matt O’Connor at Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Matt O’Connor: Hi. In your prepared remarks, you talked about intensifying certain efforts regarding regulatory processes and data on Slide 4 here. And I was just wondering if you could elaborate on, you know, I guess what you’re doing or trying to do differently on that front and if there’s any meaningful financial impact. Thank you.
Jane Fraser: Yeah, look, I think Matt, as we’ve talked about many times, the transformation is our top priority. It will be for the next few years. It is foundational for our future success, both in terms of delivering the strategy and the medium-term financial path. And we’ve been making significant investments behind it, as well as not only in the consent order but also making sure we’ve got this modern efficient infrastructure. We’re currently deep into a very large body of work, upgrading our data architecture, automating manual controls and processes, consolidating fragmented tech platforms. And all of these help enhance our business performance more broadly, not just the risk and control in the medium-term. As I’ve said, though — there are a few areas where we are intensifying our efforts, such as the automation of certain regulatory processes and data remediation, particularly related to regulatory reporting.
We’re committed to getting these right. The org changes will help us with execution and making sure that we have the impetus and everything that we need behind it, the investments that we need. We keep a close eye on execution, making sure we’ve got the right level of resourcing and expertise. And we’ll invest what we need to do, to make sure that we address these different concerns. I can’t go into much more detail in terms of our CSI, obviously, but – at [some day] (ph) this magnitude, you’d expect us to have some areas where we have good progress and others where we need to intensify efforts.
Mark Mason: Yeah — I mean, I think that’s exactly right. But you’d also expect that in this type of environment and on the heels of the regional bank stress last year that we’re looking at stress scenarios, we’re enhancing our CCAR processes, we’re enhancing our resolution and recovery processes, all of those things just to kind of — to make sure that we’re shoring up capabilities and you’d expect that across the industry quite frankly.
Operator: Our next question is from Saul Martinez at HSBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Saul Martinez: Hi, good afternoon. I’ll change tack a little bit here, but I’m curious if there’s any update on the Mexican IPO, and more specifically I’m kind of curious how [set it stone] (ph) the IPO processes — you will have a new administration and even if the candidate from same-party, she may have a less confrontational view the private sector, perhaps be more allowing a low bank — local bank to extract value from buying a bank. And, you know, I guess if the facts on the ground were to change, would you be open to a sale potentially being back on the table? Because it does seem like this is a situation where a private market valuation could be higher and even materially higher than a public market valuation.
Jane Fraser: The guiding principle that we have and we’ve had all along is making sure that we make a decision here that is in the best interest of our shareholders and makes the most sense for them. We are — we never say never, but we are very focused on the IPO path here. We believe it is the right one for our shareholders. We are well on track in the path in Mexico. We are very pleased to bring Ignacio Deschamps in as the Banamex Chairman to help guide the IPO process. We announced the management teams for the two banks earlier this quarter. We’re far down the path of the technological separation of both banks and then the full legal separation in the second half of the year. Obviously, the election is coming up fairly shortly, but we’re not anticipating that we would be deviating from the IPO path.
That is the path that we are on at the moment. I’ll never say never, but we do believe that this is the right one. But we’ll keep an eye on what’s happening in Mexico as we always do.
Operator: Our next question is from Chris Kotowski at Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.
Chris Kotowski: Hello and thanks. Just a quick one for Mark. Previously you had talked about quote bending the cost curve, between the third and the fourth quarter of this year. And on this call I thought I heard you say, it’s basically bent that second quarter should be down and we should be sequentially lower from here. So did it just happened six months earlier or is there still some other bending that comes late this year.
