A month after relocating from London to Hong Kong, Michael Geoghegan is presenting business cards with the Chinese characters face-up – even to English speakers. The chief executive of HSBC is furiously going native. Year-end results, anchored from Hong Kong rather than 8 Canada Square, were a typically well-choreographed affair. But the numbers showed why the group was so keen to emphasise the ‘H' and the ‘S' in HSBC.
Note the two-word summary of the $207bn-in-assets US business: “reducing losses”. Whichever way you cut it, North America is still a monumental drag. In 2008 it accounted for 78 per cent of total global impairment charges in personal financial services; in 2009 the share was 72 per cent. That is despite fierce contraction of the loan book, where it remains hard to distinguish the run-off portfolio from the notionally core businesses that remain. Mortgage services, consumer lending and vehicle finance assets fell 21 per cent; cards and private-label portfolios, the stuff that HSBC says it still wants, fell by 17 per cent. HSBC Finance, the US consumer business formerly known as Household, expects to continue to make losses for at least the next two years, and will remain dependent on the parent for capital infusions. The Medicaid bill was $2.7bn last year, not much of an improvement on the $3.5bn drained in 2008.
Stephen Green, the London-bound chairman who has passed responsibility for setting group strategy to Mr Geoghegan and his princelings in Hong Kong, characterised 2009 as “a year of transition”. But a year after the big mea culpa for Household, HSBC's shares have stalled at about 1.6 times book value, marooned between developed market peers at an average of 0.9 times, and purer emerging market specialists between 2 and 3. The journey has only just begun.