HSBC

HSBC Group is one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world. It was rated the world's largest banking group in 2008 in terms of market value. It has around 9,500 offices in 85 countries, headquartered in London. It operates as HSBC Bank in the UK.

Conflicts and criticisms

PR and lobbying

Internal

• Richard Beck, former group comms director until May 2011, after two decades with HSBC.
• Martin Lord, UK head of comms and government relations.
• Miles Celic, government relations manager. Previously a consultant at Fishburn Hedges' public affairs practice (left in February 2007).
• Richard Lindsay, head of media relations.

External

• Burson-Marsteller. Public affairs: the work, to be led by Gavin Grant at B-M, will include “more strategic planning” and “active engagement”. B-M will stress how HSBC has “managed a different path to domestic UK banks”. B-M won the account from Bell Pottinger Public Affairs which held it for the previous 7 years.
• Cicero Consulting. Provides lobbying to HSBC Group.
• Open Road. Provides public affairs to HSBC.
• Maitland. Providing financial PR.

Revolving door

• Lord Stephen Green, former Group Chairman, now a British Conservative politician and current Minister of State for Trade and Investment in both the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (appointed 11 January 2011).
• U.K. Life Peer Frederick Butler, Lord Butler of Brockwell, a former Treasury official and Cabinet Secretary was a Non-executive HSBC Holdings plc from 1998 to 2008.
• U.K. Life Peer Lydia Dunn, Baroness Dunn of Hong Kong Island and Knightsbridge, was a Director of HSBC Holdings plc (previously Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) from 1981 to 2008.
• Paul Geradine, Director of Listings at the Financial Services Authority until 2001, subsequently joined HSBC as a director in its equity capital markets division.
• Rachel Lomax, an independent Non-executive director since December 2008, was Permanent Secretary at the UK Government Departments for Transport and Work and Pensions and the Welsh Office from 1996 to 2003. She was also was Deputy Governor, Monetary Stability, at the Bank of England and member of the Monetary Policy Committee until June 2008.
• Sir Roderic Lyne, former Ambassador to Moscow, was appointed an Advisor to HSBC in December 2004.
• U.K. Life Peer Robert May, Baron May of Oxford, is a paid member of HSBC Corporate Social Responsibility Board.
• HSBC employee Nick Stephens was seconded to the Department for Trade and Industry from 2001 to 2003 to work as an Export Promoter.
• Nicholas Stern, Lord Stern of Brentford, the former Head of Government Economic Service at HM Treasury and an advisor to the Cabinet Office, is an Advisor to the Chairman of HSBC Holdings plc on economic development and climate change.
• Mary Jo Jacobi - former White House aide, appointed to UK Advisory Committee on Business Appointments in 2012

Use of tax havens

Research by anti-poverty campaign group ActionAid in October 2011 revealed that HSBC was biggest financial sector user of tax havens in the FTSE 100, with a grand total of 556 subsidiaries based there. HSBC also has 156 companies in the US state of Delaware (another known tax haven), compared to 97 in the rest of the USA.

A report by the TUC found that the UK's four largest banks – HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds and RBS – have some 1,200 subsidiaries in tax havens.

HSBC US - Money laundering investigations

London-based HSBC Holding Plc's money laundering investigations started in April 2003, when the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and New York state bank regulators cracked the whip on its U.S. unit, ordering it to do a better job of policing itself for suspicious money flows. Their aim was to "ensure that the bank fully addresses all deficiencies in the bank's anti-money laundering policies and procedures."

Confidential documents reviewed by Reuters allege that from 2005, the bank violated the Bank Secrecy Act and other anti-money laundering laws on a massive scale, by not adequately reviewing hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions for any that might have links to drug trafficking, terrorist financing and other criminal activity.

The documents reviewed by Reuters depict apparent anti-money laundering lapses of extraordinary breadth. According to the documents:

• The bank understaffed its anti-money laundering compliance division and hired "gullible, poorly trained, and otherwise incompetent personnel."
• HSBC failed to review thousands of internal anti-money laundering alerts and generate legally required suspicious activity reports, or SARs, on transactions picked up by the bank's internal monitoring system.
• Hundreds of billions of dollars moved unchecked each year through various bank operations because of lax due diligence and monitoring of accounts with foreign correspondent banks, which are financial institutions that rely on U.S. banks for processing services. The bank maintained accounts with "high risk" affiliates widely suspected of laundering drug-trafficking proceeds.
• In some instances, "management intentionally decided" not to review alerts of suspicious activity. An investigation summary also says, "There appear to be instances where Bank employees are misrepresenting" data sent to senior managers, and where management altered risk ratings on certain clients so that suspect transactions didn't set off alarms.

When the 2003 order came down from regulators, it hired Teresa Pesce from the high-profile U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan, where she made a name for herself as a tough prosecutor overseeing money laundering prosecutions. Pesce "knew the ropes". One of her first initiatives was to order the installation of the Customer Account Monitoring Program, or CAMP, a technology system designed to filter suspicious retail transactions across HSBC's U.S. operations.

In 2006, regulators lifted their 2003 order. Pesce left the bank in 2007 to run KPMG LLP's anti-money laundering consulting business.

Tomas Benitez, a longtime private banker in South Florida who had worked at Republic Bank, filed a lawsuit against HSBC in 2010. Benitez alleged that HSBC fired him in January 2009 after he warned colleagues that clients had violated U.S. restrictions on trade with Iran and Cuba.

It is claimed that the bank also continues to do business with so-called "casas de cambio" in Mexico, local currency exchanges used to send money abroad, without any of the proper systems for spotting suspicious transactions.

According to Reuters, a successful case against HSBC could result in an onerous fine and represent one of the most significant money laundering cases ever brought against an international bank.

In July 2012, US Senate released a report about industrial-scale money laundering at HSBC, whose Mexico division set up a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands that handled some 60,000 accounts. According to the report, HSBC's oversight was so neglectful that it knew nothing about who was behind 41% of the accounts, and that the beneficiaries are Mexican drug barons, whose criminal proceeds are laundered in the tax haven. According to the Observer, e-mails released as part of that investigation showed that Lord Green, the current Minister of State for Trade and Investment, and former Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings plc, was twice warned about compliance failures and allegations that huge sums were laundered by Mexican drug gangs through a subsidiary of HSBC.

HSBC-owned Swiss bank - tax evasion

British clients of an HSBC-owned private Swiss bank HSBC Private Banking Holdings (Suisse) SA that is the focus of a major HM Revenue & Customs investigation are alleged to have evaded tax by an amount likely to exceed £200 million, the Observer reported. HMRC told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism "the early indications are that the amounts are significant". It has been suggested wealthy Britons have placed £120 billion in Swiss banks with £6 billion in HSBC Swiss branches. HSBC said it does not condone tax evasion and it is the responsibility of clients to ensure they pay appropriate tax rates.

Trade minister Lord Green was chairman of HSBC's private banking division during the period the HMRC is investigating.

Connections to Mubarak regime

In 2011, HSBC, the biggest western bank in Egypt, faced strong criticism for its connections to the Mubarak regime.

Research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a not-for-profit body based at London's City University, has concluded that HSBC:

- raised more than £450m for two of Egypt's biggest and most controversial property developers;

- was the most active European investment bank in Egypt;

- had on its Egyptian board two directors who in 2004 went on to become ministers of state overseeing land sales and privatisations under Mubarak.

The bank's involvement with controversial Egyptian tycoons has raised questions about the role played by its former chairman, Lord Green, who in January was appointed by David Cameron as government trade and investment minister. Green pursued business links with senior figures in the Egyptian regime. In 1998, he co-chaired the Egyptian British Business Council, a high-level group that reported to then British and Egyptian prime ministers Tony Blair and Kamal Ganzouri.

Egypt's former investment minister, Mahmoud Mohieldin, responsible for privatisations for six years until 2010, was a director at HSBC Egypt before joining the government, as was Rachid Mohamed Rachid, a trade minister.

Funding fracking

HSBC is a shareholder in fracking firm Dart Energy, who it lent £63 million. It provides banking services to controversial fracking firm Cuadrilla and also helped BG Group raise €1 billion.

People

• Stuart Gulliver, chief executive, HSBC
• Douglas Flint, Group Chairman, HSBC Holdings
• Brian Robertson, Chief Executive, HSBC Bank plc (since 2010)
• Paul Thurston, Chief Executive, Retail Banking and Wealth Management, HSBC Group

Former staff

• Geoff Cook, ex-Head of Wealth Management for HSBC Bank, based in London, 'responsible for the delivery of Financial Planning Services to the 10 million HSBC customers in the UK'. Now Chief Executive at Jersey Finance.

Board of directors

Former directors

• Stephen Green, Group Chairman. Group Chief Executive from 2003 to May 2006. Joined HSBC in 1982. Also former chairman of The British Bankers' Association.
• Michael Geoghegan, CBE, Group Chief Executive from 26 March 2006 until his retirement on Dec 31, 2010. Geoghegan joined HSBC in 1973 and previously led the group's South American and European operations. A non-executive Director and Chairman of Young Enterprise.

Contacts

Address, head office London:

8 Canada Square,

London E14 5HQ

This article is part of the Finance Lobbying project of Spinwatch

This article is part of the Revolving Door project of Spinwatch.

Resources

• Action Aid, "Addicted to tax havens: The secret life of the FTSE 100," p.2 October 2011, accessed 08 October 2012.
• APPC, APPC Register Entry for 1 December 2009 to 28 February 2010, accessed 30 January 2011.
• CFOI, Individuals on Secondment to the Department of Trade & Industry, accessed 30 January 2011.
• Debrett's, The Rt Hon Sir Roderic Lyne, KBE, CMG, accessed 30 January 2011.
• Foley, Stephen, "Drugs cartels used HSBC to launder cash," Independent, 04 May 2012, accessed 08 October 2012.
• Forbes, "Drugs, Terrorism And Medicare Fraud: HSBC's Messy Money Laundering Investigations," 03 May 2012, accessed 08 October 2012.
• Guardian, "Bank secrecy masks a world of crime and destruction," 22 July 2012 The Observer, accessed 08 October 2012.
• HSBC, Biography - Sir Nicholas Stern, News Archive 2007, accessed 30 January 2011.
• HSBC, Board of Directors, accessed February 2009.
• Independent, "FSA names listing chief," 10 May 2001.
• Integrity Talking Points, "Banks funnel $21 trillion into tax havens," 24 July 2012, accessed 08 October 2012.
• Jersey Finance, Geoff Cook, Chief Executive, accessed 08 October 2012.
• Mathiason, Nick, "'Britons evaded £200m in tax' using HSBC-owned Swiss bank," Guardian 29 July 2012, accessed 08 October 2012.
• Mathiason, Nick, "HSBC under fire over leading role in land deals for Mubarak regime," Guardian 01 May 2011, accessed 08 October 2012.
• Mollenkamp, Carrick, Brett Wolf and Brian Grow, "Special Report: Documents allege HSBC money-laundering lapses," Reuters 03 May 2012, accessed 08 October 2012.
• Peel, Lilly, "Business big shot: Rachel Lomax of HSBC," 22 November 2008, The Times, accessed 30 January 2011.
• PR Week UK, "Banking industry Insider's Guide: UK banks' Reputation Managers," 03 October 2008, accessed 30 January 2011.
• Public Affairs News, 'PEOPLE MOVES' - May 2011 edition," 12 May 2011, accessed 08 October 2012.
• Singleton, David, "HSBC puts Bell Pottinger account out to tender," 12 June 2008, PR Week, accessed 30 January 2011.
• Telegraph, "HSBC may sell UK banks if new regulation too tough," 18 May 2012 , accessed 08 October 2012.
• UK Parliament, Register of Lords' Financial Interests, accessed 30 January 2011.
• Who's Who 2009, BUTLER OF BROCKWELL, online edition, Oxford University Press, accessed 24 March 2009.
• Who's Who 2009, DUNN, online edition, Oxford University Press, accessed 24 March 2009.

Notes

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