Okay, good morning all, a warm welcome to ABG Sundal Collier's Q2 result presentation. I will shortly walk you through our performance during the second quarter, but before I do that, I'd like to mention that we will, as usual, have a Q&A session after the presentation. Should you want to raise a question, please use the Q&A function in Teams and I will answer all questions you might have in turn. Okay. It's difficult to be anything but pleased with our performance in the second quarter. We have delivered our second strongest Q2 revenue number in our history, growing our top-line by 27% in the quarter year-over-year. The top-line growth has been achieved with good contribution across geographies. Strong growth in Sweden, coupled with stellar performance in Denmark.
Denmark delivering its strongest quarter ever, highlighting the enhanced position as the number one advisor in Denmark post-acquisition of FIH Partners. From a product perspective, the biggest contributor to the strong top-line growth was our Corporate Financing operations. On Private Banking, we are pleased with the reception of our services, good growth of customers, and assets under management with committed capital above SEK 2 billion , supported by the fact that we have delivered a strong performance in our discretionary portfolios, outperforming all relevant indices. Finally, before digging deeper into the numbers and our performance in the quarter, as announced today, I have decided to step down as CEO, effective from September 1st, after more than seven years in this position. It has been an extraordinary journey, I'm grateful to all of our employees, partners, clients, and shareholders for their trust and commitment.
ABG Sundal Collier has, during my time at the helm, more than doubled revenues, strengthened its positions, now was basically a good time to pass on the responsibilities to someone else that has at least a plus five-year perspective to continue to develop ABG from a position of strength. I am confident the company is well-positioned for continued success, I will stay with the firm after September 1st, I remain fully committed to supporting a smooth transition, as well as contributing to ABG longer term. Okay, with that, let's flip to the next slide and have a closer look at the numbers. Once again, a strong revenue quarter, up by 27% to NOK 727 million from NOK 570 million the same quarter last year, resulting in first half revenues of NOK 1.14 billion.
Our operating margin ended up at 25% in the quarter and 19% in the first half. Excluding transaction costs and temporary overlapping infrastructure costs related to the acquisition of FIH Partners, some other costs of a non-recurring basis, including what I mentioned the last quarter, i.e., net presentation of client interest versus gross presentation of client interest prior quarters. Excluding all these effects, the second quarter margin was 28%, the first half margin was 23%. Earnings per share ended up at NOK 0.24 in the quarter, thus NOK 0.32 in the first half of the year. Let's continue with the next slide and have a look at the market and the macro backdrop.
We had supportive markets that improved during the quarter, with equity indices reaching new all-time highs, credit spreads tightening, and the volatility decreasing and stabilizing on low levels, clearly below the magical 20 in terms of VIX. That said, long-term interest rates remained elevated both in the U.S. and Europe, indicating that not least on the back of the Iran conflict, inflation is not out of the picture. Having said that, the recent development in oil prices post Iran peace agreement negotiations, that should at least reduce the risk for negative surprises in inflation going forward, hopefully. Continuing with the next slide on how our markets performed against this macro backdrop. It is not surprising to see strong performance, strong momentum in general equity capital markets activity across Nordics with growth year-over-year in the quarter in terms of volumes of a stellar 128%.
Maybe one should have a look at the lower left-hand side of the slide instead and the increase is less dramatic if you look at a last four quarter rolling average. It's clearly an improvement and not least an improvement in IPO sentiment, as you can see in the lower left-hand side of this slide. In debt capital markets, we also witnessed continued strength on very high levels indeed. The second quarter was touching an all-time high in terms of volumes in the quarter and the increase compared to Q2 last year should be put in context of a very, very healthy and high activity indeed, continuing with structural growth.
Once and again, sometimes there is volatility, of course, in debt capital markets as well, but we see continued strong interest in Nordic debt capital markets continuing to have new issuers being interested in tapping into the Nordic debt markets, continuing to see more interest from international investors underpinning the strong structural growth we see in debt capital markets. Finally, looking at the Nordic M&A market, as usual, less drama, stable volumes with a slight decrease overall in number of transactions, but overall the feeling is that stability is the key word here. Let's continue with the next slide on how we performed, how ABG performed in these markets. Starting off with Corporate Financing we did pretty well with particularly strong contribution from our DCM operations.
Also with good support from recovery, as mentioned previously within the IPO segment, as illustrated in the top right-hand side of this slide with several IPOs conducted with us as advisors, including the best performing Nordic IPO ever in Silex. I'm also pleased to see contribution from all geographies in this regard. As you can see in the lower right on this slide, a lot of high profile and very large transactions completed within DCM. Once again, contributing strongly to our overall revenue growth in the quarter. Next slide, please. Looking at how we did within M&A. Overall market stable to slightly down. We continued delivering on a very high level indeed. As you can see on the left-hand side of this slide, we have our performance within M&A is very strong indeed in a historical context with revenues clearly above historical averages.
This quarter, we also had good contribution from all geographies once again with the strongest growth in Denmark and Sweden. As you can see on the right-hand side of this slide on the selected transactions we also had very good diversification in terms of sectors where we have been active as M&A advisors illustrating the depth of our competence across industries and sectors. Finally, next slide please before talking about headcount and costs, a few words about our very stable Brokerage and Research operations. Revenues basically flat at around NOK 150 million in the quarter and NOK 600 million in the last four quarters. Norway equity sales yet again outperformed with continued growth from high levels.
I am also pleased to see the confidence our clients show us as illustrated by our number one ranking in the latest Extel survey in Nordic Equity Trading & Execution, and our overall number two ranking in the same survey. We also ended up being joint number two ranked in the Financial Hearings survey amongst Swedish institutional investors. Well done all involved. Over to headcount and the next slide, please. We are close to 350 FTEs, full-time employees, and the growth year-on-year is mainly driven, obviously, by the acquisition of FIH Partners. In spite of us having grown our business with close to 100 full-time employees over my plus seven years at the helm, the number of FTEs within support operations have been pretty stable, around 60 FTEs.
As you can see, basically all the growth in our firm has been within investment banking according to our strategy. We have coupled this growth in FTEs with a higher revenue per head. The number, as you can see on the right-hand side of this slide. This is important to keep in mind when evaluating our ability to grow not only revenues, but also profits and profitability over time once negative temporary effects fade from acquisitions such as FIH. That leads me to the last slide before the concluding remarks, talking about operating costs. Operating expenses increased by 18% year-on-year in the first half from NOK 784 million to NOK 926 million.
This is mainly a function of higher performance-related compensation on the back of stronger revenues and higher EBIT, but also costs once again related to the integration of FIH Partners and certain one-off items in the quarter. Excluding these effects, underlying costs were both broadly in line with last year. In order to increase our operational leverage and our profitability all else equal, we have initiated a firm-wide efficiency program that is already well underway, and we expect to see the full effects of this program by the full year 2027. Okay. With that, let me summarize the key takeaways and flip to the next slide. We delivered a super solid quarter with strong growth of 27%, our second strongest second quarter on record, driven mainly by an increase in our Corporate Financing operations.
I'm very pleased to see that we delivered our strongest quarter ever on record in Denmark, highlighting the super solid position we have in Denmark post-acquisition of FIH. Private Banking continued to attract new clients and capital, with committed capital now about SEK 2 billion, supported by strong performance in our wealth management portfolios. Well, I'm leaving my role as CEO, but I'm not leaving the firm. I'm leaving the role from a position of strength. Now is the right time to hand over to a new leadership that will bring our firm onwards and upwards over the coming years. I am convinced that we are well-positioned for further success. Once again, I'm committed short-term to support a smooth transition and looking forward longer term to continue to contribute to ABG.
With that, I'd like to open up the floor for any questions should there be any. Anna?
We haven't received any questions so far.
Crystal clear. Well, obviously, I will, as usual, be around to answer any potential follow-ons or comments or questions you might have during the day. Please reach out to Anna, she will do her best to coordinate accordingly. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for the trust over the last seven years. You won't get rid of me as easy as you might think. I will be present in the background going forward. Thank you all. Bye now.