HSBC are scum. And not very well run either.
has not changed. I think it was the money-laundering for the mass-murdering Mexican drug cartels that firmed up our thinking. Or maybe it was facilitating gun-running around the world. It all sort of blurs together in a putrid mess.
From Reuters, June 28:
The bank’s troubles began when it became embroiled in a high-stakes legal showdown between the United States and China, and deepened as political turmoil engulfed Hong Kong. In the past two years, Chinese state-owned companies have ended or cut back business with HSBC as part of a clampdown by Beijing.
On a rainy day last November, China Baowu Steel Group, the world’s largest steel maker, gathered its finance department for a training session on the outskirts of Shanghai. One highlight was a presentation featuring a sensitive slide: a “black list” of 60 lenders that the state-owned steel giant had declared off-limits.
Virtually all the lenders branded by China Baowu as too “high risk” to engage with were troubled Chinese banks, large and small. But at the very end of the list, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, there was a single foreign lender, one of the largest banks in the world: HSBC Holdings PLC.
The executive making the presentation did not mince words. China Baowu can’t use these banks to obtain the short-term lending instruments known as commercial paper, the executive said, according to a person who attended the meeting. And in case anyone missed the British bank’s presence on the list, the presenter said: “If you look at the bottom, of course you can see HSBC.”
The decision by Baowu to blackball HSBC is part of a clampdown on the global London-based bank by many of China’s gargantuan state-owned enterprises - a campaign described to Reuters in interviews with HSBC bankers, and employees at state companies who have first-hand knowledge of their operations. Controlled by China’s ruling Communist Party, these companies manage the nation’s largest industrial projects and are responsible for $9.8 trillion of revenue annually.
The reason for the pullback by state firms isn’t HSBC’s financial soundness, which isn’t in question, but rather Chinese politics. People inside the state enterprises and HSBC say Beijing has grown disenchanted with the bank over sensitive domestic and international legal and political issues, from China’s crackdown in Hong Kong to the U.S. indictment of an executive at Chinese national tech champion Huawei Technologies.
“The China business at HSBC can be replaced overnight by banks from China and other countries.”
—Former Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-yingReuters identified nine state-owned enterprises that have ended or cut back on their business with HSBC as a result of the bank’s falling out of favor with Beijing. Among those who’ve shut out HSBC is Beijing-based China Energy Engineering Group Co., Ltd., a Fortune Global 500 construction conglomerate, which previously used the bank to provide guarantees for international projects, among other things. Early in 2020, the construction giant’s senior leadership sent an e-mail internally instructing employees to avoid HSBC completely, said two executives at the company with knowledge of the matter. The reason for the move, one of the executives explained, was the Huawei incident.
HSBC has for more than 150 years been a force in banking in Greater China – its initials stand for The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited. The bank’s troubles were initially sparked by its role in a high-profile U.S. case against Huawei’s chief financial officer. Beijing was enraged that the bank had provided information in 2017 about Huawei to the U.S. Department of Justice, which helped bolster the ongoing criminal case. HSBC’s involvement was first made public by a Reuters report in 2019.
Pressure on HSBC increased during the pro-democracy protests that shook Hong Kong in the second half of 2019, and when China imposed a tough national security law in the city in 2020. During the protests, Chinese social media users lashed out at the bank, alleging one of its employees had criticized the actions of the Hong Kong police in an online post – a controversy that was covered by state media.
The criticism from Beijing has been withering. Citing the Huawei case and what it said was the bank’s lack of support for the national security law, the People’s Daily, the main mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, warned last June that HSBC risked losing much of its business and would pay a “painful price” for having gone “to the dark side.”
In another sign of displeasure, Chinese regulators in Shanghai last August fined the bank and three senior HSBC bankers on the mainland, and in a rare move publicized their names. In the middle of last year, Chinese regulators also stopped holding one-on-one meetings with senior HSBC bankers, according to two mainland employees at the lender with direct knowledge of the matter.
As painful as the public blaming and shaming has been, much of the financial pressure on the world’s seventh-biggest lender by assets has been applied via China’s state-controlled enterprises. Reuters pieced together the campaign to humble HSBC, whose financial future depends on China, through interviews with more than 20 employees at state-owned companies, over 50 current and former bank employees, and several staff members at competing lenders. All spoke on condition of anonymity....
....MUCH MORE
Possibly related:December 2020
"For HSBC, Life Gets Very Complicated in Hong Kong & China, its Number One Market, as China Tightens the Screws"
June 2020
"Hong Kong: HSBC and Stanchart shares rise after backing China security law"
HSBC are criminal whores, Standard Chartered are in the running for slimeballs of the century.
And many, many more.
Here's a flat-out lie from the bank in 2011:
HSBC on China's 12th Five-Year Plan: "Delivering Low Carbon Growth"
Okay, one more, June 2018:
HSBC is staffing branches with humanoid robots that dance, take selfies and push credit cards
Now that's dystopia.
