2021 will go down in history as yet another mixed year. The pandemic continued in a battle that is by no means over; the effects of global warming became increasingly evident; and we witnessed a geopolitical power struggle. Yet 2021 was also the year in which the world became more acutely aware of the risks to the climate and biodiversity, the global economy recovered with unemployment falling back, and remarkable progress was made on the public heath situation and vaccine rollouts. We are going to have to rally together to deal with the many issues affecting our economies, our way of life and our social bonds. Global warming, biodiversity loss, population growth, resource scarcity, epidemics and geopolitical crises are going to bring globalisation as we have known it for the past thirty years to a premature end. These are all factors that we are going to have to take on board if we are to speed up our transition to a more sustainable world. Finance has a major role to play here, and it must step up to the plate. We, at Ostrum AM, are proud to be part of this effort. Client satisfaction in the world of asset management has always relied on two fundamental pledges: to deliver a return while also keeping risk under control. We added a third priority to our list quite some years ago: to factor in the corporate responsibility of our investee companies and, especially, to help our clients honour their own commitments to the climate transition. Ostrum AM has been by their side each step of the way, helping them to adjust to the latest regulations (SFDR, EU taxonomy, Energy-Climate Law, etc.) and working with them to devise methods to factor their convictions into the way their assets are managed. One of the highlights of 2021 was our drive to step up our engagement policy across the board, i.e. with respect to our individual and collective engagement initiatives, and in our capacity as a shareholder and bondholder. We also reinforced our coal exit policy and set out the key principles underlying our upcoming oil and gas policy. We continued with our push to obtain SRI labels for our open-ended funds, reaching 92.8% of our target by the end of 2021. We were able to achieve all this thanks to the efforts made by our employees. We applied a resolutely social policy seeking to build on their engagement by creating the sense of a community working towards a common goal; we did this by giving each staff member what they needed to thrive in a hybrid working environment and by pro-actively promoting diversity and inclusion in all its forms. We have high ambitions, in keeping with the challenges that lie ahead: by deploying our climate and biodiversity policies, upholding our commitment to transparency and pursuing our engagement initiatives, Ostrum AM will be able to exert ever more influence on issuers and play its part in discussions and deliberations within the financial marketplace. Philippe Setbon Chief Executive Officer of Ostrum Asset Management