Operator
Operator
Good morning, Ladies and gentlemen. And welcome to the Investor and Analyst Conference Call for HSBC Holdings Plc's Earnings Release for First Quarter 2015. For your information, this conference is being recorded. At this time I will hand the call over to your host, Mr. Stuart Gulliver, Group Chief Executive Officer. Stuart Gulliver Thanks very much. Good evening from Hong Kong and welcome to our first quarter results call for analysts and investors. With me today is Iain, who is going to talk to you about the detailed financial performance, we both then take questions. But let me start by pulling out a few highlights. Reported profit before tax for the first quarter was $274 million higher than the first quarter 2014, and adjusted profit before tax was up $349 million. The other banking markets had as usual strong start for the year with an 8% revenue increase in the markets business. Commercial banking continues to perform well, particularly in the UK and Hong Kong, and principal retail banking and wealth management generated increased revenue. And impairment charges were significantly lower compared to the same period in 2014, particularly in Europe and in North America. Adjusted operating profits expenses increased as expected and we continue to work on initiatives to deliver costs savings over the remainder of 2015 and beyond. The results for the first quarter of 2015 reflected a significant improvement on the last quarter of 2014 led by higher revenue in global banking markets. We generated $4.6 billion of capital from profit in the quarter, the enabled us to strengthen the Common Equity Tier 1 ratio to 11.2% to fund the first interim dividend of $0.10 per ordinary share which amounts to $1.6 billion net of planned script and also to continue to support asset growth. As we all know, we hold an investor update on the 9th of June. And I'm now going to hand over to Iain to go through the details of our performance.