In the end, the only thing more surprising than Noel Quinn’s appointment as chief executive officer of HSBC Holdings was his departure.
Years of globe-trotting and long hours have finally caught up with the 62-year-old and the time has come for him to “rebalance” his personal and professional life, Quinn said on April 30. He plans to stick around until the bank’s board finds his successor.
The move surprised both rivals and investors, who have spent years watching Quinn slowly rebuild HSBC into a leaner, more profitable banking powerhouse while deftly navigating the geopolitical turmoil that threatened his company’s budding operations across Asia.
Quinn’s departure comes less than five years after he was appointed HSBC’s interim boss. Even after he had spent decades working his way up through the ranks of HSBC, he was viewed as a long-shot candidate for the permanent role at the time.
“I would never have dreamed of being CEO of this bank 37 years ago,” Quinn said. “You’ve got to choose where you want to spend your energy and my choice is I want to have a better balance in how I use my energy.”
Inside HSBC, Quinn’s impending exit was viewed as clashing with his private declarations that he wanted to be at HSBC for the long haul. Publicly, he has largely expressed the same.
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For instance, when the bank made a series of management changes in 2022 that were designed to aid HSBC’s succession planning, Quinn said he planned to remain with the bank for several years.
“I’m not going anywhere soon,” he said at the time. “I expect to be here for many years.”
Unlike some rival CEOs at companies that have private jets, Quinn often flies commercial for his regular trips to the company’s operations across Asia, according to people familiar with the matter. That grueling schedule has weighed on him in recent months, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing internal matters.
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Quinn began seriously considering retirement over the Christmas holiday in December as he realised he was approaching the five-year mark. He ultimately informed HSBC chairman Mark Tucker of his decision to depart earlier this month.
Quinn stressed that it was his decision to exit and that he felt supported by Tucker throughout his tenure as CEO. Their friendship was on display during a conference call with journalists, with the two joking that the only thing they disagreed on in their time together atop the bank was their allegiance to rival English Premier League soccer teams.
“That’s the only point of contention we’ve had,” Quinn said as he explained how his favorite team — Aston Villa Football Club — and Tucker’s Chelsea Football Club had clashed in a 2-2 draw in recent days. “We were robbed,” Tucker said.
Tough times
In the days leading up to Quinn’s announcement, there had been a sense that something was afoot with the CEO. Last week, he pulled out of a champagne breakfast in New York that was meant to celebrate the opening of the bank’s revamped flagship wealth center just one day before the event was supposed to take place.
A graduate of what was known at the time as Birmingham Polytechnic, Quinn is ultimately departing HSBC after leading a strategic reset of the bank that led him to shed large parts of its business across the Western hemisphere, including assets in France and Canada, to redeploy capital to Asia.
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The moves have transformed HSBC into one of Europe’s most profitable banks, with a return on tangible equity of 14.6% at the end of last year. That compares with 9% at rival Barclays Plc and 10.1% at Standard Chartered Plc.
But his five-year tenure has also been a bruising one, punctuated by pandemic-induced lockdowns and a worsening macroeconomic environment in China. The company’s shares have largely underperformed rivals.
“We never felt he looked completely comfortable in the role and suspect that Covid was a particularly brutal period running an international business like HSBC,” Perlie Mong, an analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said in a note to clients.
And just two years ago, Quinn was embroiled in a public fight with the bank’s largest shareholder Ping An Insurance Group as the insurer tried to convince fellow investors to force HSBC to spin off its Asia business. That battle lasted for almost a year and ended in a decisive victory for Quinn as other investors failed to back the insurer’s proposal.
He has also had to navigate the increasingly fractious relationship between the US and China. At one point, he faced backlash from US lawmakers after one of the bank’s senior executives publicly backed the introduction of a national security law in Hong Kong that critics said breached the terms of the territory’s handover to China.
Months later, he delivered a robust performance in front of a hostile panel of British politicians in a move that gained him approving write-ups in the Chinese state media.
While Quinn was hesitant to outline what he expects his successor will have to take on, he was adamant that HSBC will maintain its sprawling international presence.
“I’m not going to give a to-do list to my successor, because that is not the fair thing to do to anyone,” Quinn said. “I’m very focused on a smooth, orderly transition. I’m very focused on continued execution of the strategy.”
