HSBC Holdings PLC is getting aggressive in Canada — and one needs to look no further than its latest mortgage rate for proof of broader ambitions.
HSBC Canada is offering five-year fixed-term mortgages at 2.39 percent, undercutting the lowest rates at the largest domestic lenders, including Toronto-Dominion Bank and Royal Bank of Canada.
“I want to be more competitive,” Sandra Stuart, chief executive of the Canadian unit of London-based HSBC, said in an interview from her Vancouver office. “I will never be as big as the big five, but I certainly want to have our share of [the] market and I want to be out there with good competitive products.”
The mortgage push is part of Stuart’s strategy to expand HSBC Canada across its main businesses of commercial lending, capital markets, retail banking and wealth management.
Stuart, who became head of the Canadian operations in June 2015, won the backing of HSBC, which she said has made a fourfold increase in annual investment in the Canadian operations to gain market share.
“HSBC globally is making a big bet on Canada and they’re investing in us to do that,” Stuart said. “There’s a handful of priority markets that are going to get continued investment and our job is to develop the strategy, to execute, and of course deliver the returns.”
HSBC has been in Canada since 1981, expanding through takeovers of domestic lenders and the Canadian operations of foreign banks to become the seventh-largest lender in the nation with C$95.7 billion (US$71 billion) in assets.
Commercial banking accounts for 60 percent of the firm’s Canadian profit, while its global banking and markets operations contribute 30 percent, and retail banking and wealth management represent 10 percent.
“Canada is a great place to do business,” Stuart said, citing the nation’s growing economy, geographic stability and international trade ties that dovetail with HSBC’s global reach. “Canada is the No. 2 export partner for the US and we’ve got the gateway to the Pacific, and we’ve got a real focus now on China, a great corridor with Hong Kong.”
The Canadian operations are a “top five” producer of profit before taxes, contributing 7.6 percent of total earnings for Europe’s biggest bank last year, up from 4.4 percent in 2015.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by