HSBC could wind down US cards business
HSBC will run off its US cards business, valued at some $6-10bn by analysts on deposits of $33bn (£20bn), if it can not find a buyer for the assets, said chief executive Stuart Gulliver.
“If we can’t find a buyer we will put it into rundown,” he said, in his first definitive statement that the bank is determined to offload the business even if it has to break it up to do so.
The sale of its cards division is part of a broader strategy to concentrate on corporate banking and to keep retail businesses only where it has scale or is delivering on its 12-15 per cent return on equity target. The cards business is profitable but is now seen as non-core.
The bank is also reviewing its branch presence in the US, valued by analysts at around $11bn, with plans for a radical overhaul and sale of large parts of the business.
Analysts have called for HSBC to sell down all of its US business, with Barclays Capital analyst Rohith Chandra-Rajan saying that doing so could raise $25bn.
Gulliver is also reviewing the bank’s presence in 39 countries, but during a conference in Jakarta yesterday said that Indonesia was not one of them and would be “one of our priority countries”.