Within the wealth and personal banking side, profits – on a constant currency basis – fell, as a rise in costs and a revenue decline hit the year-on-year result.

HSBC has reported a pre-tax profit of $21.556 billion for the first six months of 2024, down a touch from the same period a year ago, at $21.657 billion. 

The cost/efficiency ratio widened slightly to 43.7 per cent in H1 2024 from 41.9 per cent. Basic earnings per share rose to $0.89 from $0.86.

H1 2024 reported revenue rose to $37.292 billion, from $36.876 billion. Operating expenses also rose, to $16.296 billion from $15.457 billion a year before.

HSBC’s Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio – a standard international measure of a bank’s “shock absorber” – rose to 15 per cent from 14.8 per cent.

Shares in the bank rose around 2.7 per cent by mid-afternoon trade in London, at 695 pence per share ($8.92).

Wealth, personal banking 
Within the wealth and personal banking division – including HSBC’s private bank – pre-tax profit, on a constant currency basis, was $6.458 billion in H1 2024, sliding from $8.628 billion, HSBC said. Net operating income fell while expenses increased over the reporting period. 

Commercial banking also saw a drop in profits, although global banking and markets, and the corporate centre business, enjoyed a gain from a year before. 

“After delivering record profits in 2023, we had another strong profit performance in the first half of 2024, which is further evidence that our strategy is working,” Noel Quinn, the departing group CEO, said in a statement. “Our investment in wealth is delivering higher, more diversified revenue and we continue to grow our core international and scale businesses, all of which helped us to provide $13.7 billion of distributions in respect of the first half.”

“We are confident that we have the right strategy and model to grow revenue, even in a lower interest rate environment, and are therefore providing new guidance of a mid-teens return on average tangible equity in 2025,” he said. 

As announced earlier in July, HSBC has appointed one of its own senior figures, Georges Elhedery, as group chief executive to take over from Quinn, effective from 2 September. 

When Quinn announced his retirement at the end of April, his decision took observers by surprise. Quinn’s tenure coincided with HSBC’s pivot towards Asia as the primary source of its earnings and the lockdowns in Hong Kong, mainland China and much of the world as Covid-19 erupted in 2020. He has also been able to fend off investor demands for the bank to be broken up. Quinn has been at the lender since 1987; he was the chief executive for an interim period before being formally appointed to the role in March 2020.

CFO
Separately, HSBC appointed Jonathan Bingham has been appointed as interim group chief financial officer with effect from 2 September. He will not, the bank said, be appointed an executive director.

Bingham will retain his existing responsibilities as global financial controller. Before joining the bank in 2020, he was at KPMG for 20 years, spending the final 10 years as a banking partner.

The bank said it is now looking for a permanent CFO.