Word: hsbc
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Scotman Thomas Sutherland, a manager at a shipping company, wisely recognized the profits to be had in the burgeoning trade in a developing market like China. The bank he helped start, Hongkong and Shanghai, now called HSBC, became one of China's top financial institutions within just a few years of its founding. That...
...HSBC is sitting pretty. It boasts the most extensive branch network of any foreign bank on the mainland, with 20 outlets spread from Chengdu in the far west to Tianjin on the northeast coast. The bank has invested more than $4 billion since 2001 to buy stakes in Chinese financial institutions, including nearly 20% in both Bank of Communications, China's fifth largest bank, and Ping An Insurance, its second biggest life insurer. Compared with the same period in 2004, pretax profits in China increased sixfold, to $161 million, in the first half of 2005. As a sign...
Despite its history, HSBC needs to do far more business in developing markets like China to spur growth. After focusing much of its energy over the past seven years on mature economies, it is locked in a global contest with its chief rival, Citigroup, to tap the pocketbooks of the world's newly rich. From South Korea to India to Brazil, HSBC is expanding its branch network, launching new financial products and marketing its brand. In December HSBC acquired 10% of Vietnam's Techcombank; in November HSBC said it planned to launch the first independent investment bank in Saudi Arabia...
...Mexico only 1 in 5 people has a bank account. Rising middle classes in developing countries are low-hanging fruit for multinational financial-services companies. "In the next 25 years, you'll see economic wealth distributed more evenly with the world's population," says John Bond, HSBC's outgoing chairman. "Demand for financial services in emerging markets is going to grow consistently and probably grow faster than it will in the more mature markets...
...with high growth come high risks, including dramatic booms and busts, political instability and worse. Michael Smith, Hong Kong-- based CEO of HSBC in Asia, found that out one day in 1999 in Buenos Aires, where he was managing the Argentina operation. He had made some enemies while stamping out suspected fraud. As he drove from his office, armed men in two cars ambushed him and riddled his car with bullets. Smith got shot in the thigh but managed to smash his blood-splattered sedan through his assailants' vehicles and outlast them in a long chase. "It was real James...