The Bigger Picture
HSBC is ramping up its commitment to the arts through a variety of initiatives, including a major partnership with M+, Asia’s leading museum of contemporary visual culture. Luanne Lim, CEO of HSBC Hong Kong, discusses why art is so important to the bank— and to the city
When Luanne Lim, CEO of HSBC Hong Kong, first moved to the city in 2017, she immediately started working with colleagues from across the organisation. She was collaborating with bankers, financial controllers, technology and data analysts and, surprisingly, artists. “One of the first projects that I led in Hong Kong was the HSBC banknotes project,” says Lim, which involved managing the design of a new series of HSBC’S banknotes in Hong Kong. After months of debating the merits of various artistic approaches, Lim and the team chose delicate watercolour designs reflecting the city’s rich culture for the notes, which were released in 2018.
“Through working on the banknotes—through art—i learnt about my new home,” says Lim, who is from Singapore and has worked for HSBC since 1999, in her home country, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam—and now at the bank’s Asia headquarters in Hong Kong. She first moved to the city as Chief Operating Officer before becoming CEO in February 2022.
The banknotes project was also helpful because it gave Lim a deeper understanding of one of HSBC’S long-held areas of interest: art. “HSBC has always supported the arts, for all of its 157-year history, although people might not have known the depth of our engagement,” says Lim. “Now we’re finally telling that story.”
HSBC’S longest-running commitment to the arts is its ever-growing archive, which houses thousands of historic artefacts and artworks that trace both the development of the bank and the growth of Hong Kong as a city. Over the past year, HSBC has also launched a series of other art initiatives around Hong Kong. From April to June, the bank co-presented an exhibition of more than 200 NFTS at K11 Musea, including works by some of the most famous NFT artists in the world. Simultaneously, HSBC showcased selected NFTS on the facade of the HSBC Main Building in Central, turning the bank’s headquarters into one of the largest canvases in the city. HSBC is furthering its commitment to digital art with its new Metaverse Gallery, which is launching this month.
But perhaps the biggest news is that it has become the lead partner of M+, the museum of contemporary visual culture that opened in November 2021 and has been hailed as Hong Kong’s answer to Tate Modern in London or the Museum of Modern Art in New York. M+ has set itself the ambitious goal of being not just a museum for Hong Kong, but a museum that collects, exhibits and interprets visual art, design and architecture, and moving images from Hong Kong, Greater China, Asia and beyond—and presents 20th- and 21st-century visual culture to the world.
Lim sees connections between M+’s mission and HSBC’S. “HSBC has been connecting Hong Kong with the world, and the world with Hong Kong, since it was founded,” says Lim. “M+ is Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture. It is really a centre for international cultural exchange. That speaks a lot to HSBC—IT’S a common vision we share.”
M+ has now been open a year and, by all accounts, is a huge success. “There has been such a strong show of public support,” says Lim. “The museum has been open for a year and they had had about 1.7 million visitors by early October. It has already transformed cultural ecology in Hong Kong. I went late last year on a personal visit, before we started talking about working together on a company basis, and I was really, really impressed.”
Like many visitors, Lim was initially struck by M+’s dramatic, sprawling building, which was designed by acclaimed Swiss architecture practice Herzog & de Meuron, and how inviting it is for the public. The building perches on the edge of Victoria Harbour, at the heart of the West Kowloon Cultural District, where thousands gather every weekend to relax with friends and family. “There are people doing tai chi outside, people playing badminton, right outside a world-class museum,” says Lim. “There are impressive museums around the world. A lot of them tend to be quite intimidating, quite exclusive, but you don’t feel that at M+—it feels like everybody is welcome there. I really love that.”
This accessibility to the public is important to Lim—and to HSBC. The bank’s role as M+’s lead partner includes funding tours of the museum for various NGOS. “We will sponsor free visits for special schools, registered charitable organisations or NGOS related to rehabilitation services or persons with disabilities, among others,” says Lim. “Art should be available for everyone.”
The agreement also includes lead sponsorship of select M+ exhibitions, the first of which is the upcoming Special Exhibition Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now. The show features more than 200 works from across Kusama’s career, from museums and private collections in Asia, Europe and the US, as well as from the M+ Collection and the artist’s own collection. This is one of the most ambitious exhibitions ever held of the 93-year-old
Japanese artist’s works. “Her more than seven-decadelong career is so inspiring,” says Lim. “I remember a few years ago there was a polka-dotted pumpkin on the harbour, and every day I would see families queuing up to take photos of it. People are going to love this exhibition.”
Whenever she can, Lim takes a moment to appreciate the artworks that surround her. A work in HSBC’S collection that she particularly loves is The Art of Progress by local digital artist Victor Wong, which is exhibited in the HSBC Wealth Centre in K11 Atelier Victoria Dockside. The constantly changing video work maps dramatic drawings of mountains, inspired by traditional Chinese landscape paintings, onto the real-time peaks and troughs of the Hang Seng Index, turning market movements into a work of art. “It reflects Hong Kong’s position as both a financial centre and a cultural city,” says Lim.
She is also touched by many of the items in the HSBC Archives, including paintings by George Chinnery that depict Hong Kong in the 1800s, when it was first emerging as a trade hub, and items that reveal how intertwined HSBC is with the history of the city. “Nothing quite compares to our first customer ledger,” says Lim. “It’s a who’s who of Hong Kong and reveals the diverse nationalities who built up this city in the 1800s. The families of some of these earliest customers still bank with us today.”
As CEO, Lim is responsible for leading HSBC Hong Kong into the future—and she has big goals for the bank. “We want to continue to be the leading wealth manager across our entire client continuum, whether you are a student and you’re starting to invest with your first HK$7,000 that you’ve saved or you are a savvy investor with a billion dollars,” she says. “For all our corporate customers, big and small, we are a global bank with a huge international network and we want to connect our clients here to mainland China, to ASEAN, to the Middle East and beyond.”
She also sees enormous opportunities in the booming Greater Bay Area megalopolis, which encompasses Hong Kong, southern Guangdong and Macau, and in the areas of sustainable and socially conscious investing. “We’re mobilising finance and unlocking innovation to decarbonise the economy and to lead in sustainable finance market development,” she says. “We’ve also recently launched social loan principles financing, so it’s not just about environmental benefit but also about social benefit. Companies like healthcare businesses looking to create greater accessibility to healthcare for vulnerable groups, we can help finance them. Or if it’s a property project related to affordable housing, they can tap into our social loan principles financing.”
Since she relocated to Hong Kong, Lim has been amazed—and moved—by how closely HSBC is interwoven with the culture of the city. Multiple times a week, as she walks in or out of the building, she sees children standing in front of HSBC’S two famous lion sculptures, having their photo taken by their parents. “Everyone in Hong Kong has a connection to HSBC,” says Lim. “We’re not just a bank—we’re part of the community. Five and a half million customers out of a population of roughly seven million bank with us. That’s nearly the entire bankable population. It’s a huge responsibility to lead the bank here—and it’s also a huge privilege.”
“It’s a huge responsibility to lead the bank here— and it’s also a huge privilege” — LUANNE LIM