Stuart Gulliver, HSBC chief executive, has borrowed from the lexicon of President Barack Obama to describe a key aspect of the bank’s new strategy: a “pivot to Asia”.
While there has only been patchy evidence of greater US influence in Asia since Mr Obama coined the phrase — and almost none on the economic front — HSBC has a solid base on which to build, even as it plans to cut about 10 per cent of its 266,000 global workforce.
The bank generates 37 per cent of group revenues from Asia, with Europe next at 34 per cent. While targeting an overall reduction of group risk-weighted assets (RWAs) of at least a quarter, or about $290bn, Mr Gulliver still wants to ramp up Asia’s share of RWAs from 33 per cent to more than 40 per cent.