HSBC executives face off with Hong Kong shareholders in charm offensive to fend off calls to split city’s largest bank

HSBC’s chairman Mark Tucker, chief executive officer Noel Quinn and Asia-Pacific chairman Peter Wong Tung-shun led senior executives in meeting shareholders

HSBC unveiled three initiatives specifically for Hong Kong, in the bank’s charm offensive to assuage the minority shareholders in its largest single market

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HSBC minority shareholders queueing to enter the hall to meet HSBC’s senior executives at the International Conference and Exhibition Centre in Kowloon Bay on August 2, 2022. Photo: Enoch Yiu

Published: 7:00pm, 2 Aug 2022

A thousand HSBC shareholders packed a convention hall in Kowloon Bay to its capacity today as they vied for the chance to be heard in their first face-to-face meeting with senior management in three years.

High on their minds is whether the London-based bank – which earns most of its revenue in Asia, and counts Hong Kong as its biggest market – should continue to straddle the gulf between the East and the West, and how it can navigate the geopolitical minefield in deteriorating US-China relations.

Some shareholders, like Ping An Insurance Group with a 9.2-per cent stake, and Ken Lui with 200,000 HSBC shares, are pushing for the 157-year-old bank to spin off its Asia business for a separate listing in Hong Kong.

“HSBC made most of its profits in Hong Kong and Asia, but is based in London,” which subjects it to British banking rules, Lui said in a telephone interview from Singapore after setting up the “Spin Off HSBC Asia Concern Group” on Facebook. “There is the risk that HSBC has to follow the UK’s rules, [so] the bank should split up its Asia business and move its headquarters back to Hong Kong.”

Sai Kung’s district councilor Christine Fong Kwok-shan (second right) led a group of minority shareholders in demanding for HSBC to pay them a dividend cancelled in 2020, at the Kowloon Bay International Exhibition Centre on August 2, 2022. Photo: Enoch Yiu.

A major sore point for HSBC’s shareholders was the bank’s compliance in 2020 with the UK regulator’s demand to scrap the dividends promised for the fourth quarter of 2019 and for the next 18 months, as the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) was anxious for banks to conserve their capital amid the uncertainties of a rapidly spreading Covid-19 pandemic.

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