1 Introduction

During 2011 the LHCb experiment [1] at CERN collected 1.0 fb−1 of \(\sqrt{s} = 7 ~\mathrm{TeV} \) pp collisions. Due to the large production cross-section, in the LHCb acceptance [2], with the comparable number for charm production about 20 times larger [3, 4], these data provide unprecedented samples of heavy flavoured hadrons. The first results from LHCb have made a significant impact on the flavour physics landscape and have definitively proved the concept of a flavour physics experiment in the forward region at a hadron collider.

The physics objectives of the first phase of LHCb were set out prior to the commencement of data taking in the “roadmap document” [5]. They centred on six main areas, in all of which LHCb has by now published its first results: (i) the tree-level determination of γ [6,