M. George Culmer
Management
Thank you, Antonio, and good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to be here to present the results for the first time. This morning, I'll update you on our performance in the first half. I'll then cover our balance sheet, funding, liquidity and capital positions. As you heard from Antonio, in the first half, we delivered a resilient underlying performance, with improvements in costs and impairments offsetting the expected decrease in income with an NI impacted by the smaller balance sheet and higher funding costs and ROI by subdued demand and adverse economic assumptions and weather in insurance. Underlying profit for the half year is GBP 1.1 billion for the group and GBP 3 billion for the core business. Management profit for the group was GBP 1.2 billion, but this was after a number of offsetting items. Volatility of our own debt was a charge of GBP 357 million. There's a mark-to-market movement in our EMTNs and ECNs and reflects improvement in credit spreads towards the end of the half. Assets and bond sales of GBP 585 million comprised the loss on asset disposals associated fair value unwind and gains on bond sales. Other volatile items have a charge of GBP 452 million, it's mostly timing and accounts and economic mismatches as we hedge out the group's interest rates and FX exposures. Liability management of GBP 168 million is a gain on our own debt purchases while the fair value unwind of GBP 157 million is significantly down on prior year, which included a much higher level of impairments. That brings us to the management profit of GBP 1.2 billion for the group and GBP 2.7 billion for the core. Looking now more closely at underlying profit and starting with income. Underlying income of GBP 9.2 billion is GBP 1.9 billion down…