HSBC’s CEO Has Stepped Down. The Search Is On for a Successor.

HSBC Chief Executive Noel Quinn is leaving the bank after more than four years in charge.

Quinn, who spent almost his entire career at HSBC, has informed the board of his plan to retire from the bank, HSBC said Tuesday. He will remain in charge while the bank looks for his replacement.

HSBC’s board has started searching for a successor and is considering candidates inside and outside the bank, it said. Chairman Mark Tucker told reporters the board aims to name a new CEO in the second half of this year.

One front-runner is Georges Elhedery, who became HSBC’s chief financial officer in early 2023 after almost two decades at the bank.

Elhedery succeeded Ewen Stevenson, who left the bank after the board was unwilling to provide assurance he would become CEO, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Quinn became HSBC’s interim CEO in 2019, succeeding John Flint, and got the job on a permanent basis the following year. He managed the bank during the yearslong Covid-19 pandemic, and has doubled down on its bet on Asia—where HSBC makes most of its pretax profit.

He has pushed through a series of cost cuts, including reducing staff and negotiating sales of some of HSBC’s businesses in Argentina, Canada and France. He has also been forced to deal with pressure from Ping An Insurance, one of HSBC’s largest shareholders, which pushed for an overhaul of its Asia business.

Quinn’s appointment followed a long tradition of HSBC insiders being picked to run the bank since it was founded in Hong Kong in 1865, but he had to fend off competition from outsiders including Jean Pierre Mustier, former chief executive of UniCredit, an Italian lender.

HSBC has looked outside its ranks for other big names: Tucker, its chairman since 2017, was hired from Hong Kong insurance giant AIA.

Quinn has been at helm of the bank during a tumultuous period. When he took the interim job in 2019, Hong Kong was rocked by mass antigovernment protests. In 2020, the bank joined other British lenders in canceling dividend payouts at the request of the Bank of England, a move aimed at conserving capital as Covid-19 hit the country hard. The dividend cuts led to protests from small investors in Hong Kong and an apology from Quinn.

The bank was also caught up in U.S.-China tensions as HSBC cooperated with American prosecutors in a case against China’s Huawei Technologies and during the extradition battle over its finance chief Meng Wanzhou.

HSBC’s shares fell sharply during Quinn’s early tenure, as Covid-19 ravaged global markets. But they have been slowly recovering since, and are up more than 16% over the past year.

HSBC’s straddling of East and West led to pushback from Ping An Insurance, one of the world’s biggest insurers, which pushed HSBC to restructure in Asia, its most profitable segment. HSBC’s shareholders last year overwhelmingly rejected the proposal.

Quinn said he wanted to get a better work-life balance, adding that he intends to pursue a “portfolio career,” meaning he is likely to hold a range of positions rather than take one big job.

“It’s been a phenomenal 37 years in the bank, but in that 37 years I haven’t actually had much of a break, and this is a chance now,” Quinn said. “I think the timing works, having achieved the successful transformation that we set out on.”

His exit was announced alongside HSBC’s latest earnings report on Tuesday. The bank made a profit of $10.2 billion in the first quarter, in line with analysts’ estimates. It got a boost from the sale of its Canadian business, which added $4.8 billion to its bottom line. But HSBC also took a $1.1 billion impairment on its Argentina business, which HSBC is planning to sell.

The bank also announced a plan to buy up to $3 billion of its own shares, after completing $2 billion share purchases over the past few months.

HSBC’s first-quarter profit was a big jump from the previous quarter, when it lost around $153 million after trimming the value of its stake in Bank of Communications. But it was just shy of its record-breaking first quarter last year, when the bank booked a $10.3 billion profit thanks in part to higher interest rates.

Write to Elaine Yu at [email protected]