HSBC Narrows CEO Race to Two
February 21 2020 - 2:04PM
Dow Jones News
By Margot Patrick and Simon Clark
HSBC Holdings PLC is in the final stages of selecting its next
chief executive officer, people familiar with the matter said
Friday, in a race that has narrowed to interim CEO Noel Quinn and
UniCredit SpA boss Jean Pierre Mustier.
The board hasn't made a final decision and regulatory approval
would still need to be sought, one of the people said.
HSBC's board started looking for a new CEO last fall, after
ousting former head John Flint and installing Mr. Quinn. HSBC
Chairman Mark Tucker, who is leading the search, said earlier this
week that the search process has been "very thorough and rigorous,"
and that the board intends to stick to a six-to-12-month time frame
it set in August to fill the role.
If Mr. Mustier takes the job, it would mark the first hiring of
an outsider for the job since HSBC was founded in Hong Kong in
1865. Mr. Tucker, who started in 2017, was the bank's first
externally selected chairman. Mr. Quinn is the bank's former head
of commercial banking and has been at HSBC since 1987.
The potential shake-up comes days after Mr. Quinn laid out
sweeping plans for HSBC to scale back in Europe, the U.S. and in
investment banking. Since he started as interim CEO, the bank has
put its large French retail business on the block, and is now
aiming to reduce its head count by around 35,000 from its current
235,000 staff.
Mr. Tucker has previously said the board gave Mr. Quinn full
authority to make strategic changes and address areas of weakness.
In August, he said Mr. Quinn would bring "pace, decisiveness and
ambition."
Mr. Quinn, 58, has said he aims to make the job permanent, even
though he hadn't ever expected to be in the role after not making
the shortlist in earlier CEO successions.
Mr. Mustier, 59, has been CEO of UniCredit -- Italy's largest
bank by assets -- since July 2016, in a career that took him back
and forth between that bank and spanned other employers including
Société Générale SA. Most of his experience is in corporate and
investment banking, a recent weak spot for HSBC. He has also lived
and worked in Asia, HSBC's main source of profits.
Under his tenure, UniCredit's stock is up by around 50%, one of
the best performances by a European bank in the period. In a
three-year strategic plan, Mr. Mustier sold an array of assets
including asset manager Pioneer and online bank FinecoBank, to
bolster capital and narrow its activities. In December, he started
a new, four-year plan to shed around 8,000 jobs and close branches
to cut costs and counteract the effects of low interest rates.
Mr. Mustier has been linked before to other bank CEO jobs,
including at Deutsche Bank AG.
The Italian bank's shares fell 4% Friday, following an initial
report by Bloomberg on Thursday of his potential hiring. HSBC's
shares closed up 0.45%, in a broadly lower market.
Write to Margot Patrick at margot.patrick@wsj.com and Simon
Clark at simon.clark@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 21, 2020 13:49 ET (18:49 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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