Flockhart, who is suffering from ill health, stepped down as an executive in April of this year after a 37-year career withHSBC. He was most recently chairman of the bank’s EMEA operations, having previously been chief executive of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation up to 2009.

He also formerly served as president and group managing director overseeing Latin America and the Caribbean, CEO for Mexico, managing director in Saudi Arabia, CEO for Thailand and chairman of HSBC Malaysia.

An announcement naming his successor will be issued in due course, a spokesperson for the bank told this publication.

Flockhart’s retirement comes at a somewhat torrid time for HSBC in the US; this week Bloomberg reported (citing an internal memo it had seen) that the bank is to apologize at a forthcoming US Senate hearing for anti-money laundering controls that were not effective enough.

“We failed to spot and deal with unacceptable behaviour… It is right that we be held accountable and that we take responsibility for fixing what went wrong,” chief executive Stuart Gulliver reportedly said in the staff memo. His comments referred to a period between 2004 and 2010.

US legislators are to question the bank on July 17. US prosecutors may take criminal or civil enforcement measures involving the bank amid an investigation into terrorist funding, HSBC said towards the beginning of this year. The lender has more than tripled the size of its US compliance team and said it will exit businesses it sees as too risky.