The past year has been a momentous one for our company. Fortis successfully completed its acquisition of ABN AMRO, the largest transaction ever undertaken in the financial services industry. This transaction allows us to accelerate our strategy and to solidify our position within and outside of the Benelux – creating at the same time one of Europe’s most dynamic and sustainable financial services providers with a workforce of some 85,000 employees across 50 countries.

As we continue to grow as a company, so too does our responsibility to society. We take this responsibility seriously and consequently we will continue to increase our commitment to CSR. The launch of our international CSR Advisory Board in 2007 was an important development reflecting the importance we attach to sustainability.

In the past 12 months we have continued to focus on our three main sustainability themes: Sustainable Supply Chains, Climate Change and Social Inclusion and we have made significant progress in implementing initiatives reflecting these priorities in 2007. Attention for global issues such as poverty and human rights also intensified in the past year as has our effort to respond to these important challenges, as you will see through these new CSR web pages.

So the stage is set for an exciting future. Integration with our colleagues from ABN AMRO creates an enterprise of significant scale. We are determined to harness this human talent and vast experience in the future to take our performance – both commercially and in terms of sustainability – to the next level. In so doing our goal is to create one of Europe’s top rated financial institutions for both business and sustainability.