Howard Davies
Operator
Good morning and thank you for joining us today. And can I ask you all to turn your phones to silent for the benefit of your neighbors, thanks. We know that you need to get to Singapore by 11, so we’re going to talk fast. The bottom line loss that we’re announcing today is stark seen in isolation and is difficult for our shareholders. But the results do reflect progress in two areas, firstly the significant strides we’ve made this year in clearing our outstanding legacy issues and the continued run down of non-strategic assets. But secondly it shows the continuing strong underlying performance of the core bank, particularly in mortgages and business lending that is very evident, and the business is now growing healthily. On the first point, related to the past, 2016 saw the bank concluded a number of outstanding legacy issues. You will see in our announcements and the related one from the treasury about a potential way forward on the project formally known as Williams & Glyn. The European Commission will now be consulting on a revised plan which we and the treasury think will achieve earlier benefits for competition, particularly in small business banking and would remove a continuing burden on the bank. We now wait the conclusion of that consultation and a formal decision by the commission which we hope will be positive. It has however been frustratingly difficult to make progress on the issue surrounding the bank’s participation in residential mortgage backed securities in the US before the financial crisis. We remain under investigation and as we’ve said face potential criminal and civil action. At this point we cannot say when those issues will be resolved as the timing is out of our hands and we will not be providing any further updates…