The private banking arm of HSBC said its adjusted pre-tax profit slipped a touch in the first three months of 2015 while it drew in new client money in markets targeted for expansion.

HSBC said its global private banking arm reported adjusted pre-tax profits of $180 million in the first three months of 2015, down $3 million from a year earlier.

On an unadjusted basis, with $139 million of regulatory provisions taken into account by the private bank, pre-tax profit in the quarter was $65 million, down from $201 million in the same quarter of last year.

The cost/efficiency ratio of the private bank was 89.9 per cent, up from 69.7 per cent a year earlier, HSBC said in its statement today. Net operating income in private banking was $611 million, down from $638 million a year ago.

Total client assets were $366 billion at the end of March, 2015, from $365 billion at the end of last year, but down from $381 billion a year earlier.  Europe accounted for $178 billion of these assets at the end of March, followed by Asia at $113 billion, North America at $65 billion and Latin America at $10 billion.

There was, in overall terms, a net outflow of $1.0 billion in client money in the first quarter, but in the areas of business targeted for growth, the private bank saw $3 billion of net inflows.

For the entire HSBC group, reported pre-tax profit was $7.059 billion, a rise of 4 per cent year-on-year. Shares in London/Hong Kong-listed HSBC were down by 1.83 per cent in London trading hours.

As previously reported, HSBC’s private bank has seen its Swiss operations hit by a media and political furore linked to a data theft allegedly showing that thousands of accounts held by the bank were used by people to avoid tax. The bank, which has apologised for the matter, has stated that since 2008, many accounts have been shut down and assets under management held in the Swiss part of the private bank have declined. It is understood by this publication that many of these accounts had been shut more than a decade ago.

A number of authorities around the world are investigating the Swiss private banking arm of HSBC, as the bank reiterated in its statement today. In April this year, French magistrates told the bank it had been put under a formal criminal investigation in connection with HSBC Swiss Private Bank’s conduct in 2006 and 2007 for alleged tax offences. A fine of €1.0 billion ($1.1 billion) was imposed – HSBC is appealing that decision.

In a separate matter, HSBC’s top management has stirred controversy in the UK during its election period (the country goes to the polls on 7 May), by stating that, due to regulatory reasons and uncertainties over the UK’s future membership of the European Union, it may move its corporate headquarters out of the UK.

Among other details of results today, in the retail banking and wealth management arm of HSBC, it logged a pre-tax profit for the quarter of $1.623 billion, compared to $1.624 billion a year earlier and $1.223 billion in the previous three-month period.