High interest rates help double HSBC profits

HSBC will hand more than $3bn (£2.5bn) to shareholders, after higher interest rates helped to more than double quarterly profits, despite taking a financial hit on China’s property crisis. The London-headquartered bank said it was launching the share buyback, and pay a dividend worth 10 cents a share, after what its chief executive, Noel Quinn, hailed as “three consecutive quarters of strong financial performance”. The move came as HSBC revealed it had made $7.7bn in pre-tax profits between July and September. While it fell short of average analyst forecasts for…

HSBC executive apologises for calling UK weak over China

A senior executive at HSBC has apologised after saying the “weak” UK government had caved in to the US in its approach to doing business with China. Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the bank’s head of public affairs and a former British diplomat, said sorry after “sharing his personal views” on Britain’s policy towards Beijing at a private event, a spokesperson for HSBC said. They added that Cowper-Coles’s comments were made under the Chatham House rule, a longstanding convention that means those in attendance cannot attribute remarks at an event to individual…

UK MPs urge minister to do more to free Hongkongers’ trapped savings

The first British ministerial visit to Hong Kong since the introduction of draconian Chinese security laws five years ago was a chance to demand that China unlock more than £2bn in pensions belonging to British overseas passport holders who fled for the UK, former cabinet ministers have told the Foreign Office. A letter signed by more than 90 MPs, including 10 former ministers, urges the trade minister Dominic Johnson to do more to release frozen savings belonging to thousands of Hongkongers. Lord Johnson’s three-day visit to Hong Kong heavily focused…

UK MPs and peers find HSBC complicit in Hong Kong human rights abuses

HSBC is complicit in human rights abuses against Hong Kong residents by siding with Chinese authorities and denying pension payouts to those who fled the authoritarian crackdown, an inquiry by peers and MPs has concluded. The report by the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on Hong Kong took issue with the fact that banks including HSBC – which help to manage the compulsory pension fund that all residents pay into – have bowed to local authorities and refused to recognise the documentation of tens of thousands of residents who have tried…

As tensions rise between east and west, will HSBC be torn apart?

When Mark Tucker arrived as HSBC’s new chairman on a cloudy London day in October 2017, he was prepared for a challenge. The former insurance boss was the first outsider to lead the now 157-year-old bank, which was in the middle of a period of intense upheaval. HSBC was slimming down its investment bank, selling poorly performing businesses and slashing thousands of jobs as it tried to adapt to the post-financial-crisis era. While Tucker was well equipped to guide the lender through that period of turmoil, he must now wrestle…

‘No light at the end of the tunnel’: Americans join Hong Kong’s business exodus

In July 2018, Tara Joseph, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, wrote an article in the best-known local English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post, stressing to Americans the territory’s unique position as an Asian business hub. “The US is forgetting the differences between Hong Kong and China. Let’s remind them,” she wrote. “Hong Kong continues to have a robust and hearty infrastructure of values, practices and institutions that could not contrast more starkly with those of the mainland system.” Now, packing up and leaving the…

Oil prices climb to fresh highs, UK petrol price hits record – business live

More reaction is coming in from trade unions, economists and analysts to the increase in the national living wage and the minimum wage from next April. Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) said a boost to the minimum wage was vital “in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis” But the government must set its sights higher. We need a £10 minimum wage now, and we need ministers to cancel the cut to universal credit. This increase won’t come into effect until next spring by which time…