HSBC Holdings PLC has replaced Douglas Flint as its preferred candidate for chairman, two people familiar with the decision said, instead naming insurance executive Mark Tucker for the position, as Europe’s largest bank takes its first step to overhaul its top management team.
Tucker, 59, chief executive officer of AIA Group Ltd and former head of Prudential PLC, is in discussions with the bank, according to the people who asked not to be identified because the succession process is private.
Flint, 61, is expected to step down after six years as executive chairman and 21 years at the bank.
HSBC said the new chairman would start a search for a successor to chief executive officer Stuart Gulliver.
Bank spokeswoman Heidi Ashley said it would nominate a chairman this year, as announced at its annual meeting.
“Our process remains on track and the timetable is unchanged,” Ashley said in an e-mail on Saturday.
HSBC — one of the world’s largest lenders with about 235,000 employees in about 70 countries — is restructuring to adapt to tougher regulations and a law requiring the separation of its retail operations from its investment bank in the UK amid a legacy of failed compliance and misconduct.
The bank remains under the watch of the US Justice Department after helping South American drug cartels launder money and faces moderating economic growth in China and the prospect of a post-Brexit slowdown in the UK, its two most important regions.
Tucker played professional soccer in his early life and was on several UK teams including the Wolverhampton Wanderers, Rochdale and Barnet, according to reports from the Daily Telegraph. He switched to finance after attending the University of Leeds. He was finance director at HBOS PLC and held several leadership jobs at Prudential and Hong Kong-based AIA. Tucker is also on the board of New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Since 2011, Flint and Gulliver announced more than 87,000 job cuts and exited more than 80 businesses. Alongside most other European banks, the executives have been struggling to increase profitability faced with record-low interest rates, misconduct fines and rising compliance and regulatory costs.
The pair endured a difficult period in early 2015, when UK lawmakers criticized their leadership after fresh details from files leaked in 2008 showed the bank had helped drug cartels and arms dealers launder money and had advised customers how to evade paying taxes.
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