From regional banks to many of the world's largest financial institutions, MasterCard customers gain clear advantages from our unified global structure. These include ready acceptance, seamless processing, business support and the ability to customize payments solutions to meet emerging opportunities in local markets.

Increasingly, financial institutions are moving from limited domestic processing networks to MasterCard to increase their ability to roll out new and innovative payment solutions. For example, in the United Kingdom and Brazil, banks that once relied, respectively, on Switch and Redeshop debit networks have lowered costs and enhanced relationships with businesses and consumers by migrating to Maestro. As we continue to deliver advanced capabilities to customers across the globe, our platform will facilitate cross-border expansion and enable access to advanced payment forms.

Of course, the underlying value of any network is its speed and reliability. In this regard, MasterCard again proved its excellence in 2006. All told, our global network processed more than 16 billion transactions with virtually perfect reliability.