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| Best Emerging markets bank: HSBC | |
| Also nominated: Citi and Standard Chartered |
The importance of the emerging markets to HSBC can be demonstrated through one statistic: more than 80% of the bank’s total underlying profits come from them. It’s largely because of HSBC’s performance in emerging markets that it was able to take on the chin its huge losses in North America ($4.05 billion before tax last year) and still make an overall profit large enough to make most banks green with envy ($7.1 billion in 2009, although that was $2.2 billion less than the bank made in 2008 thanks to higher bad debts).
The bank is in 88 countries; it is this network that is crucial to its success, according to Stuart Gulliver, chairman of Europe, the Middle East and global businesses. The bank can cater to its clients globally and holistically and in a much more efficient way than most of its rivals – 60% of the profits of the bank’s corporate clients in Germany, for example, come from outside the country and increasingly from emerging markets. It’s HSBC’s international network that is of value to them not what the bank’s market share in Germany is.