Bloomberg Markets magazine accused HSBC of money laundering

In 2005, Bloomberg Markets magazine accused HSBC of money laundering for drug dealers and state sponsors of terrorism. Then-CEO Stephen Green said that "This was a singular and wholly irresponsible attack on the bank's international compliance procedures", but subsequent investigation indicated that it was accurate and proved that the bank was involved in money laundering for the Sinaloa Cartel and throughout Mexico.[42][43][44][45][46]

In July 2006, HSBC announced that it would acquire Westpac's sub-custody operations in Australia and New Zealand for $112.5 million, making HSBC the leading sub-custody and clearing player in Australia and New Zealand.[47]

In 2007, HSBC wrote down its holdings of subprime-related mortgage securities by $10.5 billion, becoming the first major bank to report its losses due to the unfolding subprime mortgage crisis.[48][49]

According to Bloomberg, "HSBC is one of world's strongest banks by some measures".[50] When HM Treasury required all UK banks to increase their capital in October 2007, the group transferred £750 million to London within hours, and announced that it had just lent £4 billion to other UK banks.[51]

In March 2009, HSBC announced that it would shut down the branch network of its HSBC Finance arm in the United States, leading to nearly 6,000 job losses and leaving only the credit card business to continue operating.[52][53] Chairman Stephen Green stated, "HSBC has a reputation for telling it as it is. With the benefit of hindsight, this is an acquisition we wish we had not undertaken."[54] According to analyst Colin Morton, "the takeover was an absolute disaster".[53][55]

In March 2009, it announced that it had made US$9.3 billion of profit in 2008 and announced a £12.5 billion (US$17.7 billion; HK$138 billion) rights issue to enable it to buy other banks that were struggling to survive.[56] However, uncertainty over the rights issue's implications for institutional investors caused volatility in the Hong Kong stock market: on 9 March 2009 HSBC's share price fell 24.14%, with 12 million shares sold in the last few seconds of trading.[57]

2010 to 2013[edit]

On 25 April 2011, HSBC decided to shut down its retail banking business in Russia and reduce its private banking presence to a representative office.[58]

On 11 May 2013, the new chief executive Stuart Gulliver announced that HSBC would refocus its business strategy and that a large-scale retrenchment of operations, particularly in respect of the retail sector, was planned. HSBC would no longer seek to be 'the world's local bank', as costs associated with this were spiraling and US$3.5 billion needed to be saved by 2013, with the aim of bringing overheads down from 55% of revenues to 48%. In 2010, then-chairman Stephen Green planned to depart HSBC to accept a government appointment in the Trade Ministry. Group Chief Executive Michael Geoghegan was expected to become the next chairman. However, while many current and former senior employees supported the tradition of promoting the chief executive to chairman, many shareholders instead pushed for an external candidate.[59][60] HSBC's board of directors had reportedly been split over the succession planning and investors were alarmed that the row would damage the company.[61]

On 23 September 2010, Geoghegan announced he would step down as chief executive of HSBC.[62] He was succeeded as chief executive by Stuart Gulliver, while Green was succeeded as chairman by Douglas Flint; Flint was serving as HSBC's finance director (chief financial officer). August 2011: Further to CEO Stuart Gulliver's plan to cut $3.5 billion in costs over the next two years, HSBC announced that it will cut 25,000 jobs and exit from 20 countries by 2013 in addition to 5,000 job cuts announced earlier in the year. The consumer banking division of HSBC will focus on the UK, Hong Kong, high-growth markets such as Mexico, Singapore, Turkey, and Brazil, and smaller countries where it has a leading market share.[63] According to Reuters, Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver told the media, "There will be further job cuts. There will be something like 25,000 roles eliminated between now and the end of 2013."[64]

In August 2011 "to align our U.S. business with our global network and meet the local and international needs of domestic and overseas clients", HSBC agreed to sell 195 branches in New York and Connecticut to First Niagara Financial Group Inc, and divestures to KeyCorpCommunity Bank, N.A. and Five Star Bank for around $1 billion, and announced the closure of 13 branches in Connecticut and New Jersey. The rest of HSBC's U.S. network will only be about half from a total 470 branches before divestments.[65] On 9 August 2011, Capital One Financial Corp. agreed to acquire HSBC's U.S. credit card business for $2.6 billion,[66] netting HSBC Holdings an estimated after-tax profit of $2.4 billion.[67] In September it was announced that HSBC sought to sell its general insurance business for around $1 billion.[68]

In 2012, HSBC was the subject of hearings of the U.S. Senate permanent subcommittee for investigations for severe deficiencies in its anti-money laundering practices (see Controversies). On 16 July the committee presented its findings.[69][70][71] Among other things, it concluded that HSBC had been transferring $7 billion in banknotes from its Mexican to its US subsidiary (much of it related to drug dealing[72]), was disregarding terrorist financing links[44] and was actively circumventing US safeguards to block transactions involving terrorists, drug lords and rogue regimes, including hiding $19.4 billion in transactions with Iran. This investigation followed on from a probe by the US Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency found that there was "significant potential for unreported money laundering or terrorist financing".[73]

On 11 December 2012, HSBC agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion fine in this money laundering case. "Bank officials repeatedly ignored internal warnings that HSBC's monitoring systems were inadequate, the Justice Department said. In 2008, for example, the CEO of HSBC Mexico was told that Mexican law enforcement had a recording of a Mexican drug lord saying that HSBC Mexico was the place to launder money."[74] The United States Department of Justice, however, decided not to pursue criminal penalties, a decision which the New York Times labelled a "dark day for the rule of law."[75] HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver said: "We accept responsibility for our past mistakes. We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again."[74]

Since 2013

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "2top-manitotasy-2" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to 2top-manitotasy-2+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/2top-manitotasy-2/CAFHVOrvnEqxthHXgukOP1aC1dniuGKdyobgZFV3mqNOMfoUBcw%40mail.gmail.com.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

我會幫助銷售你的產品

我將做的廣告任務為您提供 社交促銷