HSBC announces leadership changes amid restructuring; Trump return set to lift investment banking revenue

HSBC announced key leadership changes on Thursday as part of chief executive Georges Elhedery’s plan to restructure and simplify the bank. 

Annabel Spring, global head of private banking and wealth, and one of HSBC’s most senior female executives, will depart at the end of the year. Her role will be split between Gabriel Castello, who has been named interim global private banking chief, and Lavanya Chari, head of wealth and premier solutions.

This comes amid a broader restructuring of HSBC’s wealth division, one of four units created under a new organisational structure announced by Elhedery in October. The division, led by Barry O’Byrne, will oversee private banking, asset management and insurance.

“While we are introducing these changes at pace, the process has been measured, thoughtful and fair,” Elhedery said in a statement.

Elhedery, who succeeded Noel Quinn as CEO in September, outlined a plan earlier this year to streamline HSBC’s organisational structure. This involved establishing four business units, replacing the previous three, with two units focused on eastern and western markets.

The restructure drew comparisons to calls from Chinese insurer Ping An, a major shareholder in HSBC, which had pushed for the bank to spin off its Asia operations in an activist campaign ultimately dismissed by shareholders last year.

The bank has also appointed Adam Bagshaw, a former Deutsche Bank executive who joined HSBC in 2020, as global head of investment banking. Meanwhile, HSBC is searching for a successor to chair Mark Tucker, whose term ends in 2026.

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Donald Trump’s return to the White House is expected to boost global investment banking revenue to $316bn in 2025, a 5.7 per cent increase from 2024, according to data from analytics and insight provider Coalition Greenwich as reported by Reuters on Friday. 

The data shows that global investment banking income has exceeded $300bn only five times in the past 20 years, with recent earnings constrained by the Covid-19 pandemic, inflation and geopolitical uncertainty.

According to Coalition Greenwich forecasts, bankers handling mergers and acquisitions could earn $27.6bn in fees, representing the second-best year for M&A in two decades.

In comments to Reuters, bankers said that Trump’s pro-business leanings are expected to bolster an already robust US economy, likely driving increased cross-border dealmaking and attracting investment from European companies seeking growth opportunities.

“I know it’s that time of year where bankers love to be bullish, but we actually do think that the current climate — political clarity and macro stability — will help drive M&A,” said Richard King, head of corporate banking for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Bank of America. 

King noted significant pent-up demand expected to materialise in 2025, pointing to private equity and companies seeking strategic business acquisitions as key drivers across sectors such as healthcare, technology and energy.

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TD Bank suspended its medium-term earnings forecast on Thursday, citing a challenging 2025, as it works through its anti-money laundering remediation programme following its $3bn settlement with US authorities.

Canada’s second-largest lender faces a $3bn penalty and asset cap following US investigations into compliance failings linked to its failure to monitor around $18.3tn worth of transaction activity, which allowed hundreds of millions of dollars connected to criminal organisations to flow through the bank.

The lender said it is conducting a strategic review to reassess growth opportunities, productivity and potential investments or divestments. “Everything is on the table,” said incoming chief executive Raymond Chun. “It will be quite comprehensive and we will look at all the moving parts.”

TD Bank also warned that fiscal 2025 would be a challenging year for the bank to generate earnings growth as it invests in its risk and control infrastructure. Shares in TD Bank were down 5.64 per cent on Thursday, following the bank’s announcement.  

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Brics countries will continue developing their settlement system despite US president-elect Donald Trump’s warning of 100 per cent import tariffs on countries undermining the US dollar, according to comments by Russian deputy foreign minister Alexander Pankin to the country’s state-owned news agency RIA Novosti on Friday. 

Last week, Trump urged members of the Brics group, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and other developing economies, to pledge not to develop a new currency or back any alternative currency that could replace the US dollar, warning that failure to comply could result in 100 per cent tariffs.

RIA Novosti quoted Pankin as saying that Brics was in fact working on a settlement system rather than a new international currency. “Of course, it will continue,” he said, referring to the work on the planned system.