 in assets for high net-worth individuals. The business serves wealthy clients worth between $100,000 and $1m, according to The Wall Street Journal. While Citigroup is looking to pare back its presence in Asia, HSBC is determined to do the opposite, doubling down on a region that now accounts for 70pc of group profits at the last count. Yet HSBC risks becoming an outlier. Last month, on a high-speed train to Shanghai from Beijing, US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters that American companies had complained about China becoming 'uninvestable' because of the heightened risk of doing business in the world's second-largest economy. She provided a long list of concerns ranging from intellectual property theft and state enterprise subsidies, to fines and raids on offices, changes to counter-espionage laws, and unclear data and privacy rules. Raimondo also pointed out that she was among a group of US officials whose emails were hacked earlier this year by a group that Microsoft says is operating out of China.){kind=link}
Bank will be forced to confront whether its fealty to Beijing is becoming too costly
For a man who spent more than three decades in the diplomatic service, HSBC’s head of public affairs Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles seems to have a terrible habit of putting his foot in it.
First came news of an ill-informed claim at a closed-door event in London that the Government was “weak” because it was allowing itself to be strong-armed by the US into cutting back business dealings with China.
Of course, Sir Sherard is entirely impartial, unless you count HSBC’s continued kow-towing to Beijing, not to mention his role as chairman of the China-Britain Business Council. Still, at least he was gracious enough to apologise “for any offence caused”.
Then it emerged that Sir Sherard – who served as British ambassador to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and finally Afghanistan in the 2000s – had seemingly gone one better by insulting an entire ethnic group.