at the end of the reporting season, ben ritchie is still with us.t are we left on the table for the next half of a year? what have we learned this time at how much anticipation is there going forward? >> i think there's quite a lot of anticipation. the first half was quite difficult, but don't worry, we will pull it out of the bag in the second half. that's quite a lot of expectation hanging on performance. -- they do we believe economic outlook isn't great right now. you can cut costs for a long time. p&l is becoming an increasing struggle. what is going on? i think it is pointing towards sectors were capital investment has been lagging, such as energy or mining, and saying it is bottom. some of the defense companies have said, actually, we will see higher government spending in the second half; don't worry. then we have seen other companies pointing to cost-cutting plans and saying, don't worry, at the end of the day we will come through. quite a lot of shares came off quite significantly, and investors said, it's not a full-blown profit warning,