Our medium-term financial goals remain unchanged: in 2008, Postbank plans to achieve a return on equity before taxes of more than 20% and a cost/income ratio in the traditional banking business of less than 63%. We also aim to improve our Tier 1 ratio to 7.5% in 2009.

We are holding to our goal of generating revenue synergies of €100 million and cost synergies of €42 million by 2009 from the acquisition of BHW.

In addition, the corporate tax reform in Germany scheduled for January 1, 2008 should have a substantial positive effect on Postbank. The high proportion of our income generated in Germany should lead to a significant reduction in our expected tax rate, from around 35% to approx. 30%. This would increase our net profit by around 8% per year from 2008 compared with previous assumptions. In 2007, we also expect one-time tax income of at least €100 million from the remeasurement of deferred tax assets and liabilities following the approval of the changes in tax law by the Bundesrat (the upper house of the German Parliament).

We believe that our business model, which is geared to offering needs-driven and largely standardized products on the basis of a highly efficient processing platform, puts us in a good position for the long term. We will therefore be able to continue growing with only minor cost increases, so that our improvements in income will have almost their full impact on profit. We will continue to focus our core activities on the German market. The successful integration of BHW and the 850 acquired branches, as well as the sales strength we have gained from this, provide us with excellent means to achieve organic growth. We have thus created all the preconditions to even better exploit the enormous potential offered by our 14.6 million customers in future.