HSBC Holdings PLC may end a 14-year quest to build retail banking operations in South Korea by closing or selling branches in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.
The bank is reviewing options for the local retail unit, Hyonjin Suh, a Seoul-based spokeswoman, said in an e-mail yesterday.
London-based HSBC is considering shutting down operations, the Yonhap news agency reported, citing officials and regulators without identifying them.
HSBC is at a crossroads in South Korea after KDB Financial Group Inc abandoned plans to take over the business in July.
Chief executive officer Stuart Gulliver, who is seeking to revive profitability and save as much as US$3.5 billion in costs, this year decided to exit consumer banking in Japan. The lender said last week it is also in talks to divest its US$9 billion stake in Ping An Insurance (Group) Co (平安保險集團), China’s second-largest insurer.
HSBC has failed in at least three attempts to build up its South Korean retail banking business since it began operations there in 1998. In 1999, the UK lender walked away from talks with the South Korean government to buy SeoulBank.
In 2005, it lost a bid for Korea First Bank to Standard Chartered PLC.
HSBC also abandoned a US$6 billion bid to acquire Korea Exchange Bank in 2008 after authorities left the transaction in limbo for more than a year.
“[South] Korea remains an important market for HSBC; we continue to invest in developing our [South] Korean global banking and markets” units, Gareth Hewett, a Hong Kong-based spokesman for HSBC, said in an e-mailed statement.
“Until we have taken a decision, we will continue to concentrate on delivering a high level of service to our customers,” it said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group