We maintain an ongoing dialog with our stakeholders so that we can find out about their plans and wishes and then incorporate them into our work.

Our key stakeholders include the cooperative banks, which are both our owners and our most important customers and account for a significant proportion of our stakeholder dialog. DZ BANK's regional Banking Advisory Councils have proved to be an effective platform for this dialog: the four councils, each comprising around 40 board members from cooperative banks in the region concerned, provide advisory support to DZ BANK and also fulfill an important function as multipliers and disseminators.

We are also in constant dialog with our employees as well as with the capital markets and our suppliers. We also regularly meet with political representatives, for example via the Initiative Finanzstandort Deutschland (IFD). DZ BANK holds the 2010 chairmanship of this initiative set up by the German financial sector.