Quiet man John Coverdale keeps the HSBC ship on a steady course

It takes a while to solicit opinions out of John Coverdale, the Hong Kong-based co-head of HSBC Holdings' gargantuan commercial banking business.

Unlike Michael Geoghegan, the bank's supremely confident and self-assured chief executive, who is king of the soundbite, the quietly-spoken Coverdale often takes a few minutes to answer a question.

While Coverdale is effusive before the tape recorder is turned on, he displays the natural caution of a divisional head speaking for his organisation the moment he goes on the record. He also winces slightly as he trots out the bank's key messages - such as the often-repeated 'we are open for business', which Geoghegan has said on a loop for more than a year to highlight HSBC's financial strength compared to competitors which are still licking their self-inflicted credit crunch wounds.

He is obviously at his best toiling quietly in the background, making sure HSBC's dull but extremely worthy commercial bank continues to form the solid backbone of the institution's earnings - it made US$30 billion of profits from 2004-09.

But he has a massive job.

The commercial bank, which provides all the bread-and-butter banking services companies need, from working capital loans to treasury management, is a behemoth. It made a US$4.275 billion pre-tax profit in 2009. If it stood alone and was valued on the same earnings ratio as the HSBC group, it would command a US$112 billion market capitalisation. That is more than twice the stock market value of Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group, Bank of New York Mellon and American Express at press time.

Coverdale runs the emerging markets side of the commercial bank, including Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East. He has held the job for a year, and executives who work for him say they appreciate his steady hand on the tiller, saying the best thing he did since arriving in Hong Kong was change nothing.