The special dividend is the fulfilment of a promise we made to our shareholders at our Capital Markets Day 2022. This does not affect our ability to make potential acquisitions. At the Annual General Meeting this year, the owners gave us the opportunity to issue up to 80 million new shares. If you offset that against our share price …

We also have an „A2“ rating from Moody's, which puts us in a position to raise external capital. We are therefore ready to make a move.

Our medium-term ambition is to be one of the top 5 in the top 5: In other words, we want to be one of the five largest international providers in each of the world's five largest economies – in our home market of Germany or Europe, in the USA, in China, in Japan and in India. We have long since achieved this position in Germany and Europe, and we can achieve this goal in the USA through organic growth.

Exactly, we are thinking about strategic projects in the region. With our strong partnership with Nippon Life in Japan, and our 30% stake in Harvest Asset Management in China, we are no stranger to the region.

We'll talk about it when there's something to report.

I can't say anything about a specific date. But it won't be today or tomorrow.

Size is not an end in itself for us. There are basically three reasons for acquisitions in our industry: firstly, to broaden and deepen distribution in a core market; secondly, to scale the business; and thirdly, to add investment expertise. This is precisely the order in which we prioritise. Points two and three, ergo scalability and adding expertise, are less relevant for us.

On expertise: With its diversified business model, DWS is already a broadly positioned company with in-depth expertise in all relevant areas. On scalability: An acquisition only makes sense in terms of scalability if it enables substantial cost synergies – by around a third at the acquired company, according to a rule of thumb. This is a very difficult task. Most takeovers fail because of this.

They entail high opportunity costs: the management is tied up for several years. As a result, there is less time to focus on other tasks, such as customers and investment performance. This should be kept in mind.

Objection! I don't see it that way. We are well diversified and we will remain so. Don't forget: in the long-term active business, which includes the Active Equity, Active SQI, Active Fixed Income and Multi Assets segments, we manage more than 430 billion euros. In addition, we have more than 100 billion euros in assets under management in the Alternatives segment. This shows that DWS has a strong and broad business model. That is also one of the reasons why I joined the team a year ago.

The two segments follow a different growth logic. In the passive segment, it's also about being on the market as quickly as possible with new topics – before the competition. In the alternatives segment, where we also want to grow – private credit, for example – it is more important to build up a track record. This is a task that takes many years.

It is true that two thirds of the investments in our alternatives segment are in property. It is also true that the interest rate environment has put the market under pressure for around seven quarters. However, with interest rates now falling, we will see a recovery phase. We expect that we are at the beginning of a longer market cycle, which will also bring us new business again in the coming years.

The majority of the funds invested are subject to a notice period of twelve months. The outflows we are seeing today are therefore due to customer decisions made last year. Since July 2023, however, cancellations by investors who want to withdraw money have been decreasing again – initially only gradually, then more and more strongly.

We see this as a very positive signal. Firstly, inflation seems to be largely under control, which is good in any case. Secondly, valuations are rising across all securities because the discount factor is also falling as interest rates fall, meaning that future income is worth more in mathematical terms.

This is the starting position we are currently planning from. But as a cautious CFO, you naturally have to think about other scenarios and be prepared for them.

If we keep costs under control, we will be able to act from a position of strength in the future. Overall, we are disciplined, but of course we sometimes can still have robust discussions in which have to say no. But with the cost targets we have communicated, we have a guard rail. We have emphasised that we will keep our cost base flat – with the exception of costs that would result from stronger than expected growth in assets under management. As far as extraordinary costs such as those for transformation, legal cases or severance payments are concerned, we expect a significant decline in 2025.

The costs are only one part of the equation. The other part is revenue. We expect income to develop positively. We were one of the companies with the strongest organic growth last year – we want to continue this. Added to this are the performance fees, from which we also benefit. Rising income combined with stable costs means that the cost/income ratio is falling.

There has been pressure on margins ever since the industry has existed. Nobody can escape it. However, if we continue to show consistently good investment performance, we will be able to compete with benchmarks and competitor products. We also want to create innovative product solutions. This will enable us to counter the trend.

That is correct. And I'm not saying that our fee margins will suddenly rise again. What counts for us, however, is whether the marginal income is higher than the marginal costs, in other words whether we are earning something with newly raised funds.

I don't see this as pessimism at all, but rather a sober analysis that we are basing our actions on. It is better to actively tackle an industry trend than to be driven by it.

We are tackling digitalisation in various areas: In the product area, we launched two exchange-traded products with Galaxy Digital Holdings in the spring, which track the price of the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum. Our joint venture Allunity is working on launching a fully collateralised and regulated euro stablecoin in the course of the coming year. For our ETF brand Xtrackers, we already sell around a third of our products via digital channels. These include neobanks, platforms and the discretionary portfolio management of other providers. Our aim is to be the preferred partner of these providers.

In our view, it is important to tackle the issue as quickly and, above all, consistently as possible. The last baby boomers, who will retire around 2030, would gain nothing from a reform if we lose time now – and it would be more protracted and more expensive for future generations. Our claim as a provider must be that we have good solutions for all three pillars of retirement provision – capital accumulation in the statutory pension, in occupational pension schemes and in private pension schemes.

We have bucked this trend and recorded net inflows of 1.2 billion euros into ESG funds in the first six months of this year alone, primarily in passive funds. Client interest has not fundamentally diminished, but attention has shifted due to high interest rates and uncertainty.

We are still in talks with the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt to finalise the proceedings. And the issue is still a top priority for management. The timing of the conclusion is not in our hands and a result has not yet been finalised.

About the person

When DWS announced in August 2023 that it was poaching the then Chief Financial Officer from rival Allianz Global Investors, he was viewed as a solid choice, following the departure of CFO Claire Peel. Kobler, who holds a doctorate in economics, and has German, British and Swiss citizenship, will be based in his adopted home of London.