Word: hsbc
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...first-half results unveiled Wednesday, Aug. 5. Northern Rock "is making progress," chief executive Gary Hoffman said of the British bank's half-year results announced a day earlier. "Our first-half performance," Barclays boss John Varley reckoned the day before that, was "a good start." At HSBC, chief exec Michael Geoghegan said Monday, the first six months of the year "saw much that is encouraging for our future...
...early last year after a run on its deposits in 2007, slumped to a pretax loss of $1.2 billion in the first half, far worse than the $984 million shortfall recorded in the same period of 2008. A stellar six months at the investment-banking unit of London-based HSBC, meanwhile, helped prop up its falling profits. Income across Europe's largest bank fell to $5 billion, half the level hit a year earlier. At Barclays, the U.K.'s second-biggest lender, profits rose 8%, to $5 billion. (See pictures of London's financial crisis...
While there's no such trouble at HSBC or Barclays, Monday's interim results presented challenges of a different kind. Both lenders leaned heavily on lucrative investment-banking units to soften the blow from bad debts in the commercial or retail arms of the groups. Owing in part to its purchase last fall of Lehman Brothers' U.S. operations, profits at Barclays Capital doubled in the first half of the year, to $1.7 billion. The group's charges for bad debt, meanwhile, leaped by a similar rate, to some $7.7 billion. Vital to the bank in coming years: reducing its reliance...
...could further fuel the region's nascent rebound. But just as easily, Asia could soon find itself saddled with overheated markets similar to the U.S. housing market of a few years ago - and on the brink of another crash. "The seeds are being sown for Asia's next bubble," HSBC economist Frederic Neumann said in a recent report. "The world has not changed, it just moved places." (Read "Asian Nations Step Up Support as Crisis Rolls...
...conditions, rose an annualized 5% in the second quarter to an all-time high. In Hong Kong, a city famous for its property booms and busts, prices have rebounded from last year's slump and are on course to retake highs reached in mid-2008, according to analysts for HSBC...