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☆ HSBC shareholders should vote against Asia spinoff plan, advisor ISS says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-23 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

LONDON, April 23 (Reuters) - HSBC (HSBA.L) investors should vote against a resolution by its biggest shareholder Ping An, calling on the bank to consider strategic options including a spinoff of its Asia business, shareholder advisory group ISS said. The proposal by Ping An, over which the bank and the Chinese insurer have been arguing since last November, "lacks detailed rationale", ISS said in a note to investors seen by Reuters. ISS, which advises shareholders on how to wield their proxy votes at companies' investor meetings, became the second major such group to side with HSBC on the issue, after Glass Lewis on Tuesday likewise said the Ping An-backed plan lacked merit. Ping An on Friday accused the bank of not giving its strategic ideas a sufficient hearing. HSBC has said it had discussed the plans on around 20 occasions, but had consistently said they would destroy shareholder value and would be too costly to implement.

☆ Former investor questions Barclays vetting of ex-CEO over Epstein
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, April 21 (Reuters) - Former Barclays (BARC.L) investor Edward Bramson on Friday questioned how the British bank and its chairman Nigel Higgins vetted its ex-CEO Jes Staley over his earlier business ties to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Staley has acknowledged having been friendly with Epstein, expressed regret for their relationship and denied knowing about his crimes. Staley, who joined Barclays 2015 and left in November 2021, is contesting the findings of an investigation by UK regulators into how he characterised his relationship with Epstein. Staley, who joined Barclays after more than 30 years at JP Morgan, has been named in two civil lawsuits against the U.S. bank for enabling and concealing Epstein's network. JP Morgan, in turn, has sued Staley over "outrageous" alleged conduct and breaching his duty of loyalty to the bank.

HSBC should separate its Asia business into a Hong Kong-listed entity, top shareholder Ping An said in an update to proposals it began to push for last November. Glass Lewis said the strategic review proposal, filed by individual shareholder Ken Lui in Hong Kong and backed by Ping An, was "not in shareholders' interest". HSBC also denied a claim by Ping An that the bank had "refused to verbally engage in discussions on the proposals". The lender has had extensive discussions with Ping An on these topics, a spokesperson for HSBC said. London listed shares in HSBC were down 0.5% on Tuesday afternoon, against a broad-based 1.3% rally in the STOXX European banks index (.SX7P).

☆ HSBC shareholder Ping An to vote for bank's break-up at annual meeting -source
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

HONG KONG/LONDON, April 17 (Reuters) - HSBC's (HSBA.L) biggest shareholder Ping An is likely to vote in favour of splitting the bank up at its annual investor meeting on May 5, a source familiar with the Chinese insurer's thinking said on Monday. HSBC recommended that shareholders vote against the resolutions, and has, since Ping An began urging the spinoff last November, maintained that its global presence is worth more than any such fragmentation would yield. A spokesperson for Ping An declined to comment. With an around 8% stake in HSBC, Ping An would not be able to force the issue on its own. Reporting by Selena Li in Hong Kong and Lawrence White in London Editing by Mark PotterOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Shareholder group ISS backs Barclays board over former CEO Staley
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Sinead Cruise | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

LONDON, April 17 (Reuters) - Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has recommended Barclays investors re-elect all board members at next month's annual meeting, sapping the momentum of protests against bosses for supporting former CEO Jes Staley who is being investigated over his links with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Investors should instead await the outcome of various investigations into the matter, ISS said. Staley has acknowledged having been friendly with Epstein, but expressed regret for their relationship and has denied knowing about the financier's criminal activities. JPMorgan, in turn, has sued Staley over "outrageous" alleged conduct and breaching his duty of loyalty to the bank. Barclays docked bonuses earned by Morzaria and its current top executives by a combined 1 million pounds ($1.24 million) in February over the blunder.

☆ Proxy advisor ISS urges investors to back Barclays board
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Staley has acknowledged having been friendly with Epstein, but expressed regret for their relationship and has denied knowing about the financier's criminal activities. The notice also said Staley's unvested long-term bonuses remained suspended pending further developments, adding that the board would "consider further action as appropriate". JPMorgan, in turn, has sued Staley over "outrageous" alleged conduct and breaching his duty of loyalty to the bank. Staley's lawyers have dismissed allegations that he hid what he knew about the late disgraced financier as "slanderous" and "false". Reporting By Sinead Cruise, editing by Lawrence WhiteOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ HSBC warns France sale in jeopardy over capital concerns
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Lawrence White | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Unexpected interest rate hikes have increased the amount of regulatory capital required by the enlarged purchaser after completion, HSBC said. "Unless this issue is addressed, the purchaser will be unable to obtain regulatory approval for the Transaction," HSBC said. Under the terms of the deal, My Money Group is required to use its best efforts to obtain regulatory approval for the transaction, HSBC said. But the buyers have said they are unlikely to be able to do this without amending the terms of the deal, HSBC added. "HSBC remains committed to pursuing the sale providing appropriate terms can be agreed," it said.

LONDON, March 22 (Reuters) - The banking turmoil sparked by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is not yet over, and a significant number of banks will fail within two years, the CEO of hedge fund Man Group (EMG.L) told a Bloomberg conference in London on Wednesday. Asked whether the crisis in the sector was over, Man Group's Luke Ellis told delegates he did not think so. "I think we will have significantly more banks that don't exist in 12-24 months," Ellis said, adding that he thought smaller and regional banks in the United States and challenger banks in Britain could be at risk. Many hedge funds have made money from the banking sector volatility in recent days by betting against banks. Central banks globally have responded to the turmoil with coordinated measures to ensure the flow of cash between banks around the world.

Credit Suisse staff had already been seeking to jump ship in recent weeks, sources told Reuters. "Many Credit Suisse bankers had already been talking to a lot of people for a while [about leaving the Swiss bank]. An executive at a rival London-based wealth manager said they had seen a steady flow of CVs coming in from Credit Suisse bankers. UBS told Credit Suisse wealth bankers on Monday that it was weighing financial sweeteners for them to stay, as it seeks to reassure key staff. Some experts have said Britain's financial services industry could ultimately benefit from recent bouts of turmoil in the United States and Switzerland.

LONDON, March 16 (Reuters) - Banks should largely be able to cope with "unrealised losses" on bonds and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, top credit ratings agencies S&P Global and Moody's said on Thursday, although they remained guarded on Credit Suisse's woes. "At this stage, we view the risks from unrealized losses as manageable," S&P said in a report published just days after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, a lender it had rated as 'investment grade' until the day it fell. Rival agency Moody's also offered its balm to the Credit Suisse jitters, saying that while it would "act appropriately" with the Swiss bank's rating, Europe's lenders remain in fundamentally good health. "That kind of confidence shock that we've just seen from the U.S. is bound to have some impact," Hill said. Reporting By Marc Jones and Lawrence White Editing by Nick ZieminskiOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

"This is part of the process of the knob being turned to tighten financial conditions to make sure that we are on our way to normalising a higher interest rate world," Pick said. Shockwaves from the collapse of SVB put fresh pressure on bank stocks across Asia and Europe on Tuesday as worries about potential contagion to other lenders deepened. Morgan Stanley's Pick said the events of the last week may give the Federal Reserve pause for thought on its own rate plans. He was speaking ahead of closely-watched U.S. inflation data later in the day. Analysts at Goldman Sachs said in a note on Monday that U.S. banking stresses could spread directly to European banks.

LONDON, March 14 (Reuters) - British banks are not yet seeing a "flight to quality" in deposits among customers nervous about the safe-keeping of their money following the collapse of U.S. lender Silicon Valley Bank last week, Lloyds chief executive Charlie Nunn said on Tuesday. Shockwaves from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank further pounded bank stocks across Asia and Europe on Tuesday as worries about potential contagion to other lenders deepened. Major U.S. banks including JPMorgan (JPM.N) and Citigroup (C.N) have seen a wave of customers applying to shift their accounts to larger lenders, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. "We haven't seen what we've seen in the U.S., which is the flight to quality," Nunn said. "But let's see how that plays out and we'll see how people feel over the next period of time."

With assets of around 5.5 billion pounds and deposits of around 6.7 billion pounds, SVB UK is a minnow compared to HSBC. The situation was urgent because SVB UK had lost almost half of its deposits in the 48 hours leading up to its rescue, the source said. Officials from the Bank of England and Treasury along with board members from SVB UK were then locked in talks. HSBC also plans to inject 2 billion pounds of liquidity into SVB UK, a spokesperson for HSBC said. Advisory firm Rothschild, which advised SVB UK according to sources, also declined to comment.

[1/2] A notice hangs on the door of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) located in San Francisco, California, U.S. March 10, 2023. "Silicon Valley Bank cannot be allowed to fail given the vital community it serves," Bank of London co-founder and CEO Anthony Watson said. But an executive at a major UK bank said it was unlikely a high street lender would buy SVB UK because its credit products would not be a good fit for a mainstream bank. EXISTENTIAL THREATMore than 250 UK tech firm executives signed a letter addressed to Hunt on Saturday calling for government intervention and warned of an "existential threat" to the UK tech sector, a copy seen by Reuters shows. Sunak has said he wants to turn Britain into the "next Silicon Valley".

☆ UK races to minimise SVB fallout amid reports of potential buyers
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-12 | by ( Andrew Macaskill | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

[1/2] A notice hangs on the door of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) located in San Francisco, California, U.S. March 10, 2023. SoftBank-owned lender OakNorth Bank is weighing a bid to buy Silicon Valley Bank UK Ltd, a person with knowledge of the talks told Reuters, confirming a Sky News report. EXISTENTIAL THREATMore than 250 UK tech firm executives signed a letter addressed to Hunt on Saturday calling for government intervention and warned of an "existential threat" to the UK tech sector, a copy seen by Reuters shows. Hunt reiterated comments by the BoE that overall, Silicon Valley Bank had a limited presence in Britain and did not perform functions critical to the financial system. Sunak has said he wants to turn Britain into the "next Silicon Valley".

LONDON, March 2 (Reuters) - Britain's Nationwide Building Society has restricted customers' ability to buy cryptocurrencies, the lender said in an email to its members on Thursday. Nationwide said it will not allow payments to crypto exchanges using credit cards and will limit adult current accounts to 5,000 pounds ($5,995) of purchases per day. The building society said the move was in response to regulatory concern over the risks of buying digital currencies. Cryptocurrency prices surged in 2020 and 2021 before sharp declines last year as rising interest rates prompted investors to ditch riskier assets. In November, as part of measures to protect customers from scams, Santander (SAN.MC) introduced limits on the amount customers could transfer to cryptocurrency exchanges and said it would soon block UK customers from sending any real-time payments to cryptocurrency exchanges.

"We feel it's the right thing to do by allowing all shareholders to vote on such critical issues rather than keeping it away from the voting process," Lui told Reuters. Ping An in November urged HSBC to lower costs by cutting jobs and disposing of peripheral non-Asian businesses. "The shareholders will need to demonstrate that the requisition is valid before it can be formally accepted," a spokesperson for HSBC said. HSBC's other institutional shareholders, particularly in Britain, have so far shown little appetite for a break-up. Lui told Reuters that HSBC has requested both proposals to be submitted as 'special' resolutions, which he said shows the lender is "very worried" that the proposal will be passed.

Instead, despite reporting robust profits, banks' shares have broadly stumbled as they forecast margin pressure, suggesting intensifying competition for customers' deposits and mortage business to come. "It may be that we've seen the peak of margin," said William Chalmers, finance chief of Britain's biggest domestic bank Lloyds (LLOY.L) on Wednesday. Lenders say they have started to pass on higher rates to savers, adding that profitability is rebounding after years of low margins. Pressure to immediately increase the rates banks pay savers has been intensified by the digital offerings from U.S. entrants into the market such as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, executives at the top British lenders said. In contrast to floating rates, which broadly track the Bank of England benchmark, fixed mortgage rates have started to fall as competition intensifies.

☆ Lloyds full-year profit flat as bad loan charge weighs
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

LONDON, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L) reported flat annual profit for 2022 on Wednesday, as a jump in income driven by higher interest rates was offset by mounting bad loan provisions. Britain's biggest mortgage lender reported pretax profit of 6.9 billion pounds ($8.4 billion), unchanged on the prior year and in line with analyst forecasts compiled by the bank. The bank announced it would pay a 1.6 pence per share final dividend and a share buyback of up to 2 billion pounds, taking total shareholder returns for 2022 up to 3.6 billion pounds. Lloyds set aside 1.5 billion pounds over the year to cover potential defaults, compared to a 1.4 billion pound release of provisions in 2021 as the economy rebounded from COVID-19 lockdowns. Lloyds' revenue leapt 14% to 18 billion pounds and it raised its medium and long-term outlook for returns.

Lloyds set aside 1.5 billion pounds in 2022 to cover potential loan distress, a year after releasing 1.4 billion pounds of provisions as the economy rebounded from COVID-19. The bank reported pre-tax profit of 6.9 billion pounds ($8.4 billion) for 2022, unchanged on the previous year and in line with analyst forecasts it had compiled. It plans to pay a 1.6 pence per share final dividend and a share buyback of up to 2 billion pounds, taking total shareholder returns for 2022 up to 3.6 billion pounds. Expenses also rose 6% to 8.8 billion, partly due to rising wage bills as Lloyds boosted its staff bonus pool by 12% to 446 million pounds. Lloyds also said it had bought Tusker, a vehicle leasing company that provides electric vehicles via salary sacrifice schemes, for 300 million pounds.

The London-headquartered bank (HSBA.L) said on Tuesday it would pay a special dividend of $0.21 per share, from the proceeds of the $10 billion sale of its Canada business. HSBC's conservative outlook echoed that of British rival NatWest (NWG.L), which warned last week that profit earned from rising interest rates may have peaked. HSBC said annual expected credit losses rose to $3.6 billion, more than the $3.2 billion analysts had estimated, due to rising inflation pressuring borrowers and lingering problems in China's property market. That matched the $17.5 billion average estimate of 22 analysts compiled by the bank. Meanwhile, HSBC said it still expects to complete the sale of its Russia business in first-half 2023, taking a $300 million loss.

But some analysts had expected HSBC to also raise its key performance target of reaching a return on tangible equity of at least 12% from this year onwards, a target the bank stuck to in its earnings report. Meanwhile, HSBC said it still expects to complete the sale of its Russia business in first-half 2023, taking a $300 million loss. So far this year, the shares have risen 20% versus a 7% rise in the FTSE index (.FTSE). HSBC said annual expected credit losses rose to $3.6 billion, more than the $3.2 billion analysts had estimated, due to rising inflation pressuring borrowers and lingering problems in China's property market. Despite the fourth-quarter surge, annual profit fell to $17.5 billion from $18.9 billion for 2021, due to an impairment of $2.4 billion related to the sale of its retail banking operations in France.

☆ HSBC takes $300 mln hit on Russia business sale, says deal on track for 2023
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Lawrence White | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

Europe's biggest bank has taken a $300 million loss on the expected sale of the business, HSBC said as it reported its annual results for 2022. HSBC said in July last year the deal was pending approval from Russia's government and regulators, shortly before Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev said Russia would block the sale of foreign banks' Russian businesses. Credit Suisse last July was banned from disposing of shares in its Russian unit by a Moscow court which also ordered the seizure of 10 million euros ($10.7 million) from the Swiss bank. HSBC's operations in Russia consisted of a corporate banking business which offered a range of lending and investment banking services to domestic and multinational customers. It employed around 200 people on the eve of Russia's invasion, HSBC Chief Financial Officer Ewen Stevenson said at the time.

☆ HSBC Q4 profit rockets 92% as rising interest rates boost revenue
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

SINGAPORE/LONDON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - HSBC Holdings (HSBA.L) reported a better-than-expected 92% surge in quarterly profit on Tuesday as rising interest rates swelled its net interest income, encouraging Europe's largest bank to reiterate it could meet a key performance target for this year. The bank said it intended to pay a special dividend of $0.21 per share, as a priority use of the proceeds from the $10 billion sale of its Canada business, once that disposal is complete late this year. Reporting by Anshuman Daga and Lawrence White; Editing by Kenneth MaxwellOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Despite the overall bonus cuts for staff, Chief Executive Noel Quinn saw his pay package jump 14% to 5.6 million pounds ($6.7 million), from 4.9 million pounds the prior year. Once long-term incentive awards are included, Quinn's total pay could reach 10.5 million pounds, the bank said. The bank's bonus pool for staff was slightly smaller than the $3.5 billion paid last year. HSBC's rival NatWest raised its bonus pool by nearly a quarter to 368 million pounds in earnings last week, and bumped up CEO Alison Rose's pay package to 5.2 million pounds. Barclays meanwhile trimmed its bonus pool slightly, but still paid out 1.8 billion pounds in bonuses.

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