HSBC Holdings Essay ⋆ Business Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Promoting its slogan “the world’s local bank,” HSBC is one of the largest banking and financial services organizations in the world. While HSBC Holdings plc is incorporated in England and headquartered in London (although only from 1993; it was previously based in Hong Kong), it has operations throughout Europe (pre-tax profits in France alone exceeded US$1 billion for the first time in 2007), the Asia-Pacific region, the Americas, the Middle East, and Africa. Indeed, the company’s emerging markets of Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America now contribute more than 60 percent of group pre-tax profits. There are around 10,000 offices located in 82 countries and territories; 312,000 employees worldwide; and 125 million customers (35 million of whom are registered for internet banking). This is, therefore, a significant undertaking by any measure.

There are over 200,000 shareholders spread across 100 countries and territories.

Not surprisingly for a banking colossus, HSBC’s growth has been both organic and via numerous acquisitions. The bank’s origins can be traced back to 1865 with the establishment in that year of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, which even though founded in Hong Kong, very early on had offices in both Shanghai and London, as well as an agency in San Francisco. Numerous acquisitions followed over the years, although in the European case these were principally those of the grossly mismanaged Midland Bank plc (now HSBC Bank plc) in the United Kingdom (whose shares were acquired over many years, and the remaining equity purchased in 1992); and, in France, one of that country’s largest banks, CCF (now HSBC France) in 2000. Other acquisitions over the last half-century have taken HSBC into the Middle East (1959) in general and Saudi Arabia in particular (1978), the United States (initially in 1980, although more acquisitions followed), Germany (1980), Canada (1981), Egypt (1982), Australia (1986), Malaysia (1994), Brazil and Argentina (1997), Luxembourg and Malta (1999), Turkey (2001), Mexico (2002), China (2003), Bermuda (2004), and Central America (2006).

As would be expected in the case of a major force in the world’s banking industry, HSBC offers products in many domains, including personal financial services (including consumer finance); commercial banking; corporate and investment banking; and private banking (for individuals with high net worth).

As with many other “household name” businesses, HSBC has proven itself anxious to establish its corporate social responsibility credentials, which it has attempted along a number of dimensions. As an illustration, the company has established the HSBC Climate Partnership, which is a five-year agreement between itself, the Climate Group, the Earth-watch Institute, the Smithsonian Tropical Institute, and the World Wide Fund for Nature. At US$100 million, HSBC’s investment (the largest ever to each of the specified environmental charities) aims to combat climate change, through all of the activities of individuals, businesses, and governments, on a worldwide scale.

HSBC additionally supports the local communities in which it operates through both financial donations and via the various involvements of its employees, with the principal objectives being education (particularly of the young) and the environment. In fact, three-quarters of HSBC’s charitable giving is directed toward just these two specified areas.

Commitment to the environment (particularly climate change) is evidenced by HSBC’s intention to become “the first major bank to go carbon neutral” (although it has to be said that becoming “less of a carbon contributor” might be a more realistic objective for which to aim. Hence the “offsetting” of any “remaining” [i.e., after energy efficiency and green electricity initiatives have been pushed to the limit] carbon dioxide emissions using carbon “allowances” or “credits” would not appear per se to represent much of a “solution” to the carbon emission problem).

Elsewhere, HSBC has been concerned to develop a “sustainable approach to banking” that includes such things as the adoption of the Ecuador Principles (a set of voluntary guidelines that addresses the environmental and social issues that arise in project financing), and the avoidance of certain types of business (such as financing weapons manufacture, dealing with countries the subject of international sanctions, or the laundering of earnings from crime or tax evasion).

As HSBC has maintained, the group’s “goal is not, and never has been, profit at any cost” because it is aware that tomorrow’s success depends upon the trust it builds today. HSBC Holdings plc fared better than most banks in the 2008 banking crisis.

Bibliography:

Bloomberg News, “HSBC Seen Faring Better than Most in Banking Storm,” Sydney Morning Herald (cited March 2009);
HSBC Holdings, Annual Report and Accounts (2008);
HSBC Holdings, Annual Review (2007).

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