The two institutions will reportedly meet later this month to discuss the spin-off suggestion.
Executives at London-based HSBC and Chinese insurer Ping An plan to meet in the middle of May to discuss the latter’s proposal to spin off the Asian business and then list it in Hong Kong, according to a «Reuters» report on Thursday that cited unnamed sources.
According to HSBC's 2021 annual report, Ping An owns 8 percent of its ordinary shares and is the British bank's largest shareholder. HSBC has yet to directly respond to the proposal but has maintained that it believes it has the «right strategy» to «generate higher returns and maximize shareholder value».
Endless Debate
This is also not the first time that HSBC has considered increasing its emphasis on the business in Asia. In February 2021, it announced that it would shift capital and resources to areas where it demonstrably achieved the best returns and that this was mainly Asia. At that point, it also indicated that its capital allocation and planned revenue concentration to Asia was 42 percent of group equity and that it intended to increase this to 50 percent in the medium- to long-term.
Under former CEO Stuart Gulliver, the bank implemented a widely touted «pivot to Asia» strategic drive in the latter 2010s that was seen as a key way of driving growth and lending. Moreover, Hong Kong had been the bank's headquarters until 1993 when they were moved to London after it bought Midland Bank. In 2016, HSBC considered whether it should return to Hong Kong but ultimately decided against doing so.
