A Heritage of “Honesty and Fair Dealing” For more than 120 years, the Harris name has symbolized “honesty and fair dealing” in the Chicago area. In recognition of the strength and trustworthiness our customers have come to associate with this name, we adopted a unified brand – Harris™¹ – for all our U.S.-based businesses in 2004.

Continued Expansion Expanding our reach allows us to provide added convenience for existing Harris personal and business banking customers while giving new customers access to our broad range of excellent products and services. Last year, we acquired New Lenox State Bank, a well-respected community bank with key locations in Chicago’s southwestern suburbs, and Lakeland Community Bank, with locations in the fast-growing Lake County region. We also opened nine new branches bearing the Harris name in the Chicago area.

Retail Expansion In October 2004, we announced our intention to acquire Mercantile Bancorp Inc., a highly regarded community bank that serves personal and business customers at 19 branch locations in northwest Indiana. It is the first retail banking expansion for us into a neighbouring state and a natural extension for Harris. When this acquisition closes, it will increase the Harris community banking network to 189 locations in the Midwest and further expand the network to more than 500 Harris ABMs.

Investing in Wealth Management Since 1999, we have invested $1.5 billion in expanding our U.S. wealth management operations through acquisitions and organic growth. We now have a geographic footprint that covers nine states. We have rounded out our range of products and services to provide a truly integrated wealth management offering.

Over the last year, we have made important strides in reshaping our wealth management operations into a streamlined business model that can endure downturns in market cycles. We have repriced fees and improved client segmentation, as well as consolidating call centres and back-office operations and renegotiating third-party contracts.

Focus on Comprehensive Solutions Through Harris Private Bank, we offer comprehensive wealth management solutions for high net worth and ultrahigh net worth clients. We continue to expand in existing high-growth, affluent markets in order to better serve these clients and prospects. With the acquisition and integration of myCFO and Sullivan, Bruyette, Speros & Blayney, we have enhanced our product offering, and we can now provide access to outside investment managers for our ultra-high net worth clients. We have also worked with our partners at Harris Nesbitt to expand our services and coverage for existing business and corporate clients in the Midwest.

An Integrated Investment and Corporate Bank We are building an integrated North American investment and corporate bank under the Harris Nesbitt brand in the United States, targeting private and smaller-cap public companies. Our nationwide service offering is focused on the following sectors: Business Services; Commercial and Industrial; Consumer and Leisure; Energy and Power; Financial Institutions; Financial Sponsors; Food and Agribusiness; Healthcare; Media, Communications and Technology; and Real Estate and Construction.

We have expanded our U.S. offering and improved our ability to provide integrated solutions to our clients. Last year, we completed the integration of New York-based Gerard Klauer Mattison, recognized for its mid-market U.S. equity research, sales and trading capabilities.

We also announced senior leadership appointments as part of our ongoing effort to enhance our U.S. mergers and acquisitions advisory and equity underwriting business.

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• Become the leading Midwest personal and business bank through accelerated organic growth and acquisitions.
• Consolidate 25 separate Illinois bank charters into one national bank charter within the next 12 months, which over time will help us improve customer service, streamline our business model and lower our overhead costs.
• Achieve a total of 200 Harris branches in the Chicago area by 2007.
• Accelerate growth by leveraging the integration of our U.S. investment and corporate banking business, with a focus on increasing the proportion of fee-based revenue.
• Strengthen and broaden relationships with target investment and corporate banking clients across our expanded range of capabilities.
• Sharpen our focus in wealth management on the effectiveness of our sales force, and fine-tune our business models.