HSBC pledges tax haven cutback at annual meeting
Chairman tells angry shareholders bank will improve compliance, sees great opportunities in increasingly internationalised yuan
HSBC pledged to cut its activities in tax havens and further tighten compliance procedures, under a barrage of complaints about past misdeeds from shareholders at the bank's annual general meeting in London.
The global banking giant also said that it saw great opportunity in trading China's increasingly internationalised yuan, which it believed could be one of the world's top three trading currencies by 2015.
As the European Union toughens its measures against tax evasion and offshore havens, a shareholder asked what the bank would do, as it had subsidiaries in those tax havens.
Chairman Douglas Flint said over the next several years there would be a "significant reduction" of activity in those places. He said the operations would not shut down, as they were legitimate, and such activities were "not immoral or wrong".
When several shareholders criticised HSBC for failing to comply with regulations in its operations in India, France and Germany, Flint said the bank had put more resources into improving its standards globally. He declined to comment on specific regions.