HSBC shares jump after naming top Natwest boss as new UK chief
European banking juggernaut HSBC enjoyed a bump in its share price as markets opened on Monday after the bank named its new UK boss.
David Lindberg, who most recently led retail banking operations at Natwest, will join the FTSE 100 titan to take the helm at its UK bank.
Shares jumped near two per cent in early trading to 987.80p. It follows the bank falling over 2.5 per cent on Friday after an industry-wide sell-off as US jitters spread to the City market.
Lindberg replaces outgoing chief Ian Stuart, who in March was revealed to be appointed as the group’s customer and culture director – a newly created title.
HSBC chief executive Georges Elhedery has described Stuart’s new role as “vital to the long-term success of HSBC”.
Elhedery also stressed the UK as “one of our two home markets” as he welcomed Lindberg into the role.
“The UK is core to our foundational strength as a group,” he added.
HSBC eyes growth beyond UK
But, the fresh appointment comes as the bank’s top boss target Asia and the Middle East for future growth prospects and has slowly rowed back on European operations.
Last month, Michael Roberts, HSBC’s chief executive of corporate Institutional Banking, said the group had “underestimated” the “enormous amount of capital” in Asia and the Middle East.
“The interesting thing is the amount of money in the Middle East… You have a reordering of the world’s capital flows,” he told Bloomberg TV.
HSBC has taken the chop to European divisions as part of Elhedery’s relentless cost-cutting regime in pursuit of growth.
The bank – which boasts a market capitalisation of near £170bn – scaled down its investment banking operations in Europe and the Americas in favour of Asia and the Middle East and staff across the continents faced the axe.
Over ten per cent of the work force in France were culled after HSBC sold its retail banking business in France to CCF – a subsidiary of My Money group.
Analysts previously told City PM the decisions marked a “continuation of the bank’s strategic pivot to Asia which has been intensifying over the past decade”.