HSBC will expand its investment banking business to serve the rising demand of companies from Asia and the Middle East for initial public offerings (IPOs), said the co-CEOs of the bank’s biggest profit centre.
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The plan aligns with the bank’s restructuring to focus on high-return areas like Hong Kong and India, as well as exit low-profitability markets like Europe and the US.
Hong Kong sits atop the world’s IPO league table, after 27 companies raised US$9.96 billion this year as of last week, according to the London Stock Exchange Group. India’s two bourses – the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange – ranked fourth and fifth in the same period, with 113 companies raising US$7.72 billion.
“We have taken out the mergers and acquisitions [as well as] the equity capital market [businesses] from the UK and the US markets,” said David Liao, HSBC’s co-CEO for Asia and the Middle East, in an interview on Thursday. “We want to redirect [growth towards a] deeper focus on Asia and intra-Asia opportunities.”
Hong Kong, one of the two cities where HSBC was founded in 1865, was a listing market as well as a hub for international investors, Liao said, which prompted the bank to expand its capacity to serve the growing population of wealth management clientele beyond the city’s 7.5 million population.
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