Best emerging markets bank: HSBC
| Also shortlisted: Citi DBS |
| View more 2014 awards |
How do you compete with a bank like HSBC? With a balanced global business model, providing some hedge against market volatilities, HSBC, like Citi, is tightly chained to the emerging market growth cycle.
While revenue growth at the group level might not be reaching the levels some shareholders expect for an institution that captures 85% of global trade flows, the global lender has made concerted steps to become the proverbial nimble elephant.
In recent years, HSBC has streamlined its multi-product international network, centred on locally capitalized business units, by exiting retail operations in some low margin markets, identifying growth markets, including China, India, Singapore, Brazil and Mexico, and allocating greater resources to FX and equities, in particular.
Key to the streamlining in recent years has been the strengthening of collaboration between global businesses, in particular, cross-sales from the global banking and markets (GMB) division to commercial banking (CMB), which grew 11% in 2013, principally driven by FX products. HSBC says greater collaboration between businesses has garnered $1.3