Thank you for attending this year’s Financial Markets Department cocktail function. It has almost become tradition for me to take stock of major global and domestic market developments that occurred during the past year, and to briefly reflect on their implications for South Africa. In the past, we also used this event to brief you, our partners in financial markets and other stakeholders, on key projects undertaken,changes and innovations introduced in the Financial Markets Department. This year, though, I would like to take a slightly different approach. Rather than providing a detailed review of operations over the past year, I will look at what I think are potential challenges that market participants and policymakers are likely to be confronted with in the period ahead. Given the time constraints, I will focus on the policy implications of some key market developments.