Though there are a number of factors in our success this year, in my view one of the most important — certainly in gaining market share — was a decision we made in late 1999 to bring together our many businesses under a single, unifying vision.

We recognized then — even at the height of the markets — that our future growth depended on rededicating ourselves — and, in some cases, reorienting ourselves — to the needs and goals of our clients. Although our client constituencies are varied — from institutions to governments to individuals — we believed that our mission in serving them was the same: to put their interests above our own; to measure our success by how much we help them in achieving theirs.

The vision statement that we developed in 2000 expresses that commitment:

This vision drew upon our essential skills in connecting the brightest people with the most powerful ideas and the capital to help clients succeed on their own terms. The adoption of this vision by our Board of Directors set in motion a fairly robust change in the way we approached our businesses. It is an activity that continues to this day throughout the firm.

It established a foundation for the financial results we are now seeing. Many of the changes enacted began with gaining a deeper understanding of our clients and their behavior (both individually and in terms of their own customers) — an understanding that has had significant strategic implications for our businesses.

In 2000, we established firmwide standards for the measurement of client satisfaction and the strength of our brand. Feedback from our clients — as well as improvements in their estimation of us, especially vis-à-vis our competitors — has become a critical element of our self-evaluation. Client satisfaction surveys and client profitability metrics (which had not been broadly used in the past) are now a routine part of our business activities. Not surprisingly, different business units have taken different paths in identifying client-based solutions and achieving market share growth.

In our Institutional Securities group, we have established Senior Relationship Managers to oversee our ongoing client relationships. In doing so, we broke down many of the internal silos that had been built which restricted development of more effective overall client strategies. Recently, Terry Meguid, head of our Investment Banking Division, created the Strategic Client Engagement Group, a team of eight of our most senior bankers, whose sole responsibilities will now be to focus on our portfolio of clients, with less of the day-to-day burden of administration.

The entire Institutional Securities business, under the leadership of Vikram Pandit, is focusing on the importance of execution as a driver of client satisfaction, differentiation and future growth. Superior execution will ensure that we not only understand client strategy, but that we also create greater satisfaction. The focus on execution will drive innovation by building unique product solutions for complex client problems. And superior execution will give us major operating advantages because we will be able to replicate solutions for different client segments with similar needs.

John Schaefer and the Individual Investor Group determined that a new service model segmented by client needs was in order for his business. After spending two years listening to clients and tirelessly building capabilities across a number of service and product platforms, John's group recently introduced ClientOne — a high-touch model that puts the financial advisor at the center of a personalized approach to providing a more sophisticated offering to affluent clients. We believe ClientOne helps to differentiate us from competition through a clearer understanding of clients across their life cycle and a stronger involvement with them over time. An intense financial advisor training program has been initiated to accomplish these objectives. Tiering of clients into Platinum, Gold and Blue gives us the ability to offer optimal pricing and benefits to our best clients. And our recently announced "Statement of Commitment to Clients" clearly identifies what clients can expect from us and what we expect of them as part of our ongoing relationships. In addition, John created, for the first time, the position of Client Advocate, who will act as an ombudsman to rectify problems and identify conflicts on behalf of our individual clients. All these steps to get closer to clients, combined with an improved market environment, have resulted in a significant rebound in our individual investor business, and we believe they position us well for the years ahead.