HSBC Holdings PLC yesterday said pre-tax profit fell in the first half of this year, but that it intends to resume quarterly dividends next year as its annual outlook remained positive.
The firm said it made US$9.175 billion before tax, down more than 15 percent year-on-year.
Chief executive Noel Quinn said that “it reflected a more normalized level of expected credit losses compared with the COVID-19 releases made last year, as well as the macroeconomic impact of the Russia-Ukraine war.”
Photo: Bloomberg
The annual revenue outlook was positive, he said, as net interest income is expected to reach at least US$31 billion this year and US$37 billion next year as global interest rates rise.
Quinn said the group is confident of achieving its best returns in a decade next year.
“We also intend to revert to quarterly dividends in 2023,” he added.
London-headquartered HSBC was among a number of major banks to cancel their dividends early in the COVID-19 pandemic following a de facto order from the Bank of England — a move that upset some Hong Kong shareholders.
The plan to resume payouts came before HSBC executives are today to meet with Hong Kong shareholders face-to-face for the first time in three years. The executives are expected to field questions about a restructuring bid from its biggest shareholder Ping An Insurance Group Co (平安保險集團).
The lender is under pressure from Ping An, which has a 9.2 percent stake, to spin off its Asian operations in a bid to unlock shareholder value amid tensions between China and the West.
Quinn and chairman Mark Tucker have not publicly commented on Ping An’s campaign, but the bank has hinted that it wants to keep its current structure while continuing a pivot to Asia, Bloomberg reported.
Hong Kong politician Christine Fong (方國珊) on Sunday said that HSBC separating its Asian business and bringing back its primary listing to the territory is the “best way to protect [the interests of] minority shareholders.”
Fong, who reportedly represents 500 small investors in HSBC stock, also voiced support for Ping An getting seats on HSBC’s board, citing the canceled dividends in 2020 as a reason.
Last year, HSBC vowed to accelerate a multiyear pivot to Asia and the Middle East, with ambitions to lead Asia’s wealth management market.
The bank said that it would invest US$6 billion in Hong Kong, China and Singapore and hire more than 5,000 wealth advisers — while slashing 35,000 jobs and cutting its retail operations in the US and France.
HSBC has commissioned Goldman Sachs Group Inc and advisory firm Robey Warshaw LLP to rebuff Ping An’s campaign, according to Bloomberg.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts