Awards for Excellence 2016
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Also shortlisted: |
Bank of America Merrill Lynch |
Citi |
Goldman Sachs |
Morgan Stanley |
For many years, HSBC’s investment bankers had to put up with being the butt of the jokes of their competitors. But those working in its flourishing global banking and markets (GB&M) division may well have the last laugh. In time, the last 12 months will be seen as a watershed period for a business that has often struggled to define its identity, and one whose performance rarely matched its potential. GB&M has long had some excellent businesses: the problem was its successes always came with a ‘but’.
Yes, it had a superbly profitable franchise in Asia, but it should do, given its long presence in Hong Kong and China. Yes, it was great at debt capital markets, but it had no equivalent equities or M&A franchise to speak of. Yes, it was a bank of global scale, but you cannot really call it a global bank when it is relatively weak in the biggest market of all, the US.