Mike Morgan
Group CEO & Executive Director
Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of Close Brothers 2026 Preliminary Results. I’m Mike Morgan, Group Chief Executive, and I’m joined today by Fiona McCarthy, our Group CFO.
Today, I will start with a brief introduction and then hand over to Fiona, who will walk you through our financial performance. After that, I will return to focus on our strategic delivery and wrap up the presentation. We look forward to taking your questions afterwards, both via the telephone conference line and over the webcast. You can submit your questions either during or after the presentation.
The group has been through significant change over the past 2 years as we have repositioned the business as a focused specialist bank. Today, we support 1.6 million customers with a loan book of GBP 9.5 billion across 3 core divisions of Commercial, Retail and Property. Our scale and contribution to the economy is meaningful.
In the last year, we lent approximately GBP 6.5 billion to businesses and consumers across the U.K. and Ireland. We operate in markets with strong structural demand and where our deep customer relationships, local decision-making and disciplined underwriting create genuine differentiation. We see significant potential for growth in these markets, and we are taking steps to materially reduce our cost base and deliver a step-change in profitability.
Our performance in full year ’26 reflects the significant progress we have made on delivery of our strategic objectives to simplify, to optimize and to
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