Summary of the 2018 CKM working group on semileptonic and leptonic b-hadron decays

A summary of WG II of the CKM 2018 conference on semileptonic and leptonic $b$-hadron decays is presented. This includes discussions on the CKM matrix element magitudes $|V_{ub}|$ and $|V_{cb}|$, lepton universality tests such as $R(D^{*})$ and leptonic decays. As is usual for semileptonic and leptonic decays, much discussion is devoted towards the interplay between theoretical QCD calculations and the experimental measurements.