HSBC is planning to sell or shut its branches in Bangladesh and several other weaker Asian markets, a news report has said.
The bank has now decided to focus on six core Asian markets outside of Hong Kong, the London-based Financial Times newspaper has quoted Peter Wong, chief executive of HSBC in Asia, as saying.
The markets to see the HSBC scale back are Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, Macau, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, it said in a report on Monday.
The bank has also been widely reported to be in discussions to sell its Korean business, which has 14 branches.
The key Asian markets where HSBC is planning to reinforce its strength are Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, while the strategic markets are Taiwan, which Wong said was the third leg of the Greater China story, and Vietnam, which was very fast growing.
“In the past, the way HSBC looked at Asia was Hong Kong and then the rest of Asia Pacific,” Wong said.
“But the rest of Asia Pacific was quite a few countries, so what we did was establish six key markets outside of Hong Kong that we wanted to focus our resources on,” he added.
The report has said the bank has already sold or shut down its retail operations in Japan and Thailand and sold its Asian insurance businesses as part of a broader strategic overhaul under chief executive Stuart Gulliver.
HSBC had missed analysts’ expectations with a near $22 billion profit last year, which marked the biggest profit among western banks thanks to its strength in Asia and other emerging markets.
HSBC, Europe’s biggest bank, on Feb 27 reported that 2011 profits of $21.9 billion, up 15 percent on the year but just below the average forecast of $22.2 billion from 13 analysts polled by Reuters.
The profit included $3.9 billion of gains on the value of its own debt, Reuters has said.
Profits at its investment bank were down 24 percent on 2010 at $7 billion, hurt as the euro zone debt crisis slowed capital markets activity in the second half of last year, it added.
CEO Gulliver is reshaping HSBC to cut annual costs by $3.5 billion, lift profitability and sharpen its focus on Asia, and said he will step up the execution of his plan this year, according to Reuters.
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Source: The Independent
