Jonas Ström
chief executive officer
Good morning, everyone, and a warm welcome to ABG Sundal Collier’s first quarter results presentation. Before we start the presentation, I would like to mention that, as always, we will be holding a Q&A session after the presentation, and if you want to ask a question, please use the Q&A function in Teams, and we will answer all your questions in turn.
We entered 2026 from a strong position and had a good start to the quarter before we faced another period of geopolitical uncertainty with the outbreak of war in Iran.
This coincided with the typically most active period during the quarter, during the first quarter, March. Geopolitical tensions have had a negative impact on risk appetite in markets, resulting in lower transaction activity in capital markets specifically, but also longer execution lead times in general. Against this backdrop, I believe that our first quarter performance once again proves the resilience of our business model enabled by our broad product offering and presence in many different markets, sectors and geographies. The breadth of our product range is not something that happens by chance. It requires that we have confidence in continuing to invest in growth and strengthening our positions because the alternative would be to lose our relevance over time. Therefore, we continue to work relentlessly to strengthen our positions at the same time that the tremendous development in technology enables us to increase productivity in the next two years.
During the first quarter, we also integrated FIH partners into our platform, and we
