HSBC

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HSBC logo

HSBC Holdings PLC is one the largest banking groups in the world. It is headquartered in London, with its head office based in the HSBC Tower, London, a part of the Canary Wharf development in the London Docklands. Its founding member is The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, a bank established by the Scot Thomas Sutherland to finance trade in the Far East in 1865.

The bank is the largest banking conglomerate after Citigroup. It reports in US dollars as seventy per cent of its earnings come from outside the UK.

Table of contents

1 Activities in the United Kingdom
2 Activities in Hong Kong
3 Activities in Shanghai
4 Activities elsewhere
5 History of HSBC Holdings
6 See also
7 External links

Activities in the United Kingdom

HSBC is one of the Big Four banks in the United Kingdom.

Activities in Hong Kong

HSBC owns Hang Seng Bank after which the Hang Seng Index for stock prices in Hong Kong is named; it is one of the three banks which issues banknotes for Hong Kong (the other two being the Bank of China and Standard Chartered Bank).

The Hong Kong headquarters of the bank are located in Central, Hong Kong, in the HSBC Tower, designed by the British architect Norman Foster.

Activities in Shanghai

HSBC established its Shanghai branch office on the 3rd of April, 1865. Aside from the period 1941-1945, in which Japanese aggressors forced HSBC and other foreign-invested banks to leave the local market, it has had a continuous presence in the city. HSBC was historically housed in one of the largest and most impressive buildings on The Bund, Shanghai's boulevard formerly known as the Wall Street of the Orient. Currently it is located in its own HSBC Tower in the Pudong area of Shanghai.

Activities elsewhere

HSBC has a strong presence in overseas Chinese communities especially in Vancouver and Toronto in Canada. HSBC (Canada) is the only Canadian bank with headquarter located in British Columbia. It also opened some branch offices in the USA. There was a branch office on the ground floor of the World Trade Center in New York.

History of HSBC Holdings

1865 - The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited is established in Shanghai to finance the growing trade between China and Europe. It is incorporated in Hong Kong by special dispensation from the British Treasury under the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Ordinance 1866.
1959 - HSBC acquires The British Bank of the Middle East and the Mercantile Bank (based in India).
1965 - Purchase of a controlling interest in Hang Seng Bank
1980s - Move into Canadian and Australian markets
1992 - acquisition of Midland Bank of the United Kingdom.
1999 - acquisition of Republic New York
2003 - acquisition of Household International of the United States.

On November 20 2003, a bomb blast in Istanbul destroyed the bank's head office in Turkey causing several deaths and hundreds of injuries.