“HSBC Faces Pressure from Shareholders to Split Group Amid Asia Focus”

HSBC bank, which is headquartered in London but generates most of its profits in Asia, is facing demands from some of its shareholders to split the group, at its general meeting on Friday.

“In recent years, HSBC has achieved much better results in its operations in Asia compared to its Western operations”, points out a resolution filed by minority shareholders and not supported by the group’s management.

“In February 2021, HSBC announced a strategic shift to the Asian market and a withdrawal from the Western market”, yet “Asian operations continue to effectively subsidize the Western part of the business, to the detriment of HSBC’s global shareholders” , says the resolution, supported by Ping An, the bank’s largest shareholder.

Its authors call for “structural reforms which may include (but are not limited to) the separation of Asian activities from Western activities, strategic reorganization and restructuring”.

Chinese insurer Ping An has been campaigning for several months for a spin-off of Asian operations to unlock more value.

In a rare public speech, he felt in April that the bank’s performance was not up to par and that the group had failed to “meet the key challenges of its business model”.

The HSBC banking group, however, published a jump in its net profit group share of 274.8% over one year in the first quarter of 2023.

But the insurer believes that the recent improvement in performance is only linked to the rise in interest rates, which have now peaked, also citing the deterioration of relations between the United States and China to justify the restructuring.