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HSBC move out of London ‘entirely speculative’
Business digest: Bank to remain in London, but highlights London’s need to keep competitive edge
HSBC has insisted that its headquarters will remain in London for the foreseeable future, but admitted that new rules in the UK meant that the bank was "increasingly asked by shareholders and investors about the likely additional cost".
Chairman Douglas Flint and chief executive Stuart Gulliver spoke yesterday amidst rumours, prompted by a report in the Sunday Telegraph, that it was "likely" that the bank would soon return to Hong Kong for financial reasons. They dismissed the story as "entirely speculative and presumptuous".
Rising costs, new bank levies and the threat of a new watchdog, the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA), have prompted banks to complain that they are being unfairly punished. The rumours about an HSBC relocation came as Mervyn King made yet another public attack on banks for causing the financial crisis.
A spokesman from HM Treasury said that the UK's position as a "world-leading financial centre" had to be balanced with the need for banks to "pay their fair share of deficit reduction".
Read a full report at BBC News. ·
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Like many other people I know - businessmen, friends and family - I used to think it merely amusing that the word 'bankers' happened to rhyme with 'w*nkers'. I fear that with each passing day, whether it's the lattest utterances from Barclays' CEO or HSBC's patent attempt to blackmail the British Government into leaving the banking regulations the way they are, the 'w' word seems remarkably appropriate. Even something of an understatement. What is curious is that the deeply unattractive greed, selfishness, venality and lack of morals flagrantly, nay almost proudly displayed by most banks worldwide, with callous disregard to their own customers' needs is what they all consider to be their unquestioned role. In a nutshell: greed, naked greed, is just fine: the essence of modern banking, in fact. But I must point out that no-one in today's society signed up this horrendous agenda of casino-capitalism by the banks that benefits nobody but them. So why are we stuck with it anyway? Cos they say so? Come on, I don't buy it. Casino-capitalism belongs in the playground of the hedge funds and venture capitalists, NOT in the domain of responsible wealth-building, job creating business banking. Their objectives are mirror opposites - one is responsible; the other is underhand, dodgy and yes, often the world of the dishonourable gambler. How on earth do we see these two functions taking place under one roof! And to cap it all, governments bail out any large bank that trips and falls - in the name of saving the country's economy. With, by the way, almost no painful penalties to be paid for rescuing them. And who pays the real price of all this dishonest mess? Yup, the voters. We pay via (a) more taxes and (b) huge job losses. In short, a massive hit to the entire economy. That is some business plan: I wonder who wrote it? It's breathtaking in its simplicity and arrogance. Whoever would have thought it would work so neatly, in country after country acros the globe? Our banks are run by a bunch of highway robbers - completely outside the laws that apply to the rest of us. It doesn't say much for our collective intelligence, political will or moral codes, does it? I think it's time we all got a grip on a reality and told these w*nkers where to get off. Who says they have the right to screw up everybody else's lives but their own? It doesn't stop at immorality, this is fraud, pure and simple. Jail sentences should be applied. (By the way, Bernie Madoff was no shining example of probity, we all know. But he was a very convenient scapegoat who was hung out to dry ... to distract attention away from those whose fraud was hundreds, thousands of times more serious than Madoff's. But we hear nothing. Nothing. Just deep silence). Now let's go and conduct citizens' arrests of CEOs and chairmen of banks all over the world - all on the same day. That would draw the attention we want!