Outlook
The macroeconomic outlook continues to be clouded by ongoing conflicts, other geopolitical tensions and the upcoming US elections. We expect these uncertainties to persist for the foreseeable future, and they will likely lead to higher market volatility compared with the first half of the year.
Entering the third quarter, we are seeing positive investor sentiment and continued momentum in client and transactional activity. Also visible are moderate net interest income headwinds from ongoing mix shifts in Global Wealth Management and the effects of the second Swiss National Bank rate cut, not yet captured in our deposit pricing in Personal & Corporate Banking.
As we execute our integration plans, we expect to incur in the third quarter of 2024 around USD 1.1bn of integration-related expenses, while the pace of gross cost savings will decline modestly sequentially. Integration-related expenses should be partly offset by around USD 0.6bn accretion of purchase accounting effects.