HSBC, the London based but Asian centric banking group, has named the first «outsider» to take on the chairman’s role at the bank.
Mark Tucker was announced as a director and Group Chairman Designate, from 1 September 2017, by the bank via a statement to the Hong Kong and U.K. stock exchanges. Tucker will take over as non executive Group Chairman on 1 October 2017.
Tucker is currently Group Chief Executive and President of AIA Group (AIA) and is based in Hong Kong.
He joined AIA in July 2010, and led its successful IPO in October 2010. Since then, it has become the world’s largest independent publicly-listed pan-Asian life insurance group.
Before joining AIA, Tucker’s career was primarily with Prudential. He was the founder and Chief Executive of Prudential Corporation Asia (1994 to 2003) and was on the Board of Prudential for 10 years, serving as its Group Chief Executive from 2005 to 2009.
Challenges Ahead
As a non-executive director, Tucker served on the Court of The Bank of England from June 2009 to May 2012, where he was a member of both its Financial Stability and Audit and Risk Committees. Since 2012 to the present, he has been an independent non-executive director of the Goldman Sachs group. He will stand down from that role before joining the Board of HSBC.
Tucker will face numerous challenges when he finally arrives at HSBC's Canary Wharf headquarters.
The looming Brexit and all its scenarios for the bank, a number of regulatory and compliance issues in various jurisdictions and the bank has said the new chairman Tucker will start a search for a successor to chief executive Stuart Gulliver.
Asia Friendly
Last month the bank reported a 62 percent drop in its annual pretax profits falling short of analysts expectations. It has also made serious provisions for the numerous regulatory issues.
On the plus side Tucker knows Asia well and will surely realise the importance to the group that the so called «Pivot to Asia» becomes more than just a catchy slogan.
