Asia the key as HSBC’S profits rocket

● Bank’s incoming boss expected to accelerate ‘pivot’ to eastern region

narrative in recent years, and Gulliver said the lender had achieved $600m of cost reduction in the third quarter, $5.2bn so far in 2017 and was on track for $6bn by the end of the year.

The group also said that it had completed more than 70 per cent of its share buyback scheme – which was announced in July and boosts the earnings of the fewer shares left circulating.

Ian Gordon, banking guru at broker Investec, said it had been a “decent” quarter for the bank. “We see the revenue performancealongsidecirca1per cent quarter-on-quarter loan growth as the key positives,” he said.

HSBC’S finance director Iain Mackay said the performance in terms of revenues and earnings showed HSBC had “good momentum”. He said: “We’re seeing good investor appetite for new business coming through not only in Hong Kong but further afield in Asia.”

HSBC saw return on equity, a key measure of profitability, almost double to more than 8 per cent in the first nine months of the year, but it did not give a timeframe for achieving its long term target of 10 per cent. “We won’t achieve10percentbyend-2017, but we are heading in the right direction,” Mackay said.