Banker who axed 100,000 bows out
HSBC’S departing boss insists he has no regrets over his running of the scandal hit bank – as he picked up £6.1m in a pay deal.
Stuart Gulliver took charge of the lender in 2011 and has overseen a drastic reorganisation which saw 107 businesses sold and 100,000 jobs cut.
He also grappled with some of the darkest periods in the lender’s history – including a £1.4bn fine in 2012 for money laundering on behalf of mexican drug lords and tax avoidance scandals in Switzerland and Panama.
But on his final day in charge yesterday, Gulliver insisted he had left the bank in good shape for successor John Flint.
He said: ‘There’s not a lot of point in trading backwards. You don’t get to choose when the board picks you. You have to play the cards you are dealt the best you can and that’s what I have chosen to do.’
He worked at HSBC for 38 years, joining straight after he graduated from Oxford, and rose through the ranks with postings in london, Hong Kong, Tokyo and the middle east.
He made a name for himself by turning the bank’s Asian markets operation into a major success, and then avoiding the most toxic assets in the run-up to the financial crisis.
Gulliver, 58, was the last man standing after a brutal power struggle to succeed michael Geoghegan as chief executive and pledged to act as a careful steward of the 150-year-old bank.
In a rare interview soon after taking charge, he said he would be judged on two things – the share price, which is up around 10pc since he took over, and whether the bank is seen as ‘decent and moral’.
‘I want to hand this firm off with its reputation intact or enhanced at the end of my stewardship,’ he said at the time. But HSBC was rocked by a series of crises during his time at the helm. It only last year escaped from a deferred prosecution agreement over the mexico debacle, which would have allowed uS authorities to press criminal charges if the bank put a foot wrong.
Gulliver faced damaging revelations of his own following the Swiss tax scandal, when it emerged he had hidden £5m in an HSBC account in Switzerland under the name of a Panamanian company called Worcester equities.
Gulliver claimed this was not for tax reasons but simply so colleagues would not learn the size of his bonus.
He has faced a personal legal battle with HmRC over his domicile, although no misbehaviour is alleged on Gulliver’s part and the dispute is claimed to be purely factual.
As he is replaced by fellow HSBC lifer Flint, 49, the bank unveiled a jump in profits from £5.1bn to £12.3bn for 2017 thanks to strong growth in Asia.
But results for the final three months of the year disappointed analysts and shares slipped 3.1pc or 23.5p to 737p.
There was a 40pc jump in cash lost from bad loans, which hit £470m for the quarter because of the collapse of British outsourcer Carillion and South African retail group Steinhoff.
HSBC is a major player on the British High Street with 17m uK customers. It shuttered 117 bank branches across the country last year as part of a push to move online, but no further closures are planned at present.