That said, I would nonetheless like to share with you four minimum conditions which I consider to be important for mergers and acquisitions in the banking sector: The first applies to any strategy, but it is particularly relevant to M&A: an M&A transaction is more likely to succeed if it is planned, purposeful, and done out of conviction rather than compulsion.
The Bank continues to judge that the economy is operating slightly below its production capacity, and we expect that it will move back to full capacity in the second half of 2006. Core inflation is expected to return to 2 per cent around the end of 2006.