HSBC Holdings Plc chief executive Noel Quinn is stepping down in a surprise move after nearly five years in the job, sparking a search for a replacement at Europe’s largest bank.
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(Bloomberg) — HSBC Holdings Plc Chief Executive Noel Quinn is unexpectedly stepping down after nearly five years in the job, sparking a search for a replacement at Europe’s largest bank.
According to a statement Tuesday, the board has begun a formal process to find a successor and will consider both internal and external candidates. Quinn will remain in office throughout this process to ensure a smooth and orderly transition, it said.
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During his tenure, Quinn led a series of strategic reviews that culminated in a plan to increase the bank’s investment in its Asian business while reducing investment in developed Western markets such as the United States and France. His departure comes as HSBC grapples with a rapid deterioration in U.S.-China relations, undermining the company’s years-long efforts to expand there.
“When you do this job, you have to give 100%, if not 120%, of your energy, your mindset and your time to the role,” Quinn said on the conference call with reporters. “You can carry on like that, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to the balance in life that I wanted.”
During Quinn’s tenure, HSBC’s return on tangible equity soared and profits hit a record last year. The company’s shares have risen 35% since it took over at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020, compared to the FTSE All-Share Index’s 53% rise.
The London-based bank also reported a 1.8% decline in first-quarter pretax profit to $12.65 billion on Tuesday, beating the company’s average consensus estimate of $12.6 billion. The lender also announced a new $3 billion buyback.
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Quinn’s tenure
This will be the third CEO search under chairman Mark Tucker, who took the helm of HSBC in October 2017.
The first step came when he appointed Quinn’s predecessor, John Flint, as CEO in 2018. He later handed Quinn the reins after ousting Flint just 18 months after appointing the HSBC veteran to head the bank amid disagreements over strategy.
In 2022, Quinn said the promotion of former markets chief Georges Elhedery to chief financial officer was part of the bank’s long-term succession planning. At the time, he said his “aim was to ensure that there are no fewer than three, ideally four to five, potential succession options that the board could consider within HSBC.”
Quinn began his banking career in 1987 with British lender Midland Bank, which HSBC bought in 1992. The majority of his career at HSBC was spent in commercial banking.
He began to think more seriously about leaving the bank over Christmas and eventually informed Tucker in recent weeks of his intention to retire. Tucker aims to complete the CEO search by the second half of the year.
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Quinn has been granted good leaver status, meaning he is still entitled to his deferred awards and they will continue to vest. This status is subject to the condition that he does not accept a job with a defined list of competitors after his retirement, said the HSBC statement.
“We never felt that he was completely comfortable in the role and suspect that Covid has been a particularly brutal time to run an international company like HSBC,” Perlie Mong, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said in a message to customers. Still, she said, his departure “after just four years in the position was surprising, especially since it took seven months to actually get the job.”
(Updates with comments from the conference call beginning in the fourth paragraph.)
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