The world’s largest banking organization, HSBC, reports that higher interest rates have helped its quarterly profit nearly treble.
The London-based company’s profit before tax for the final three months of 2022 was $5.2 billion (£4.3 billion), up more than 90% from the same period the previous year.
Nevertheless, after accounting for the cost of selling its French retail banking operations, pre-tax profit for the entire year decreased by $1.4 billion to $17.5 billion.
Moreover, HSBC is in the midst of selling its operations in Canada.
The bank stated that once the transaction was completed, it intended to pay out dividends to shareholders using the proceeds from that sale.
Noel Quinn, the CEO of HSBC, stated that “2022 was another successful year for HSBC.” He continued, “We are on course to offer better returns in 2023.”
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The company finally succeeded in selling its French retail bank in June 2021 after a protracted battle to do so as it turned its attention to Asia.
As a result of that divestment, HSBC now anticipates suffering a $2.4 billion damage to its profitability.
The Royal Bank of Canada and HSBC announced their agreement to sell each other’s Canadian banking operations in November.
The transaction, which was valued at $13.5 billion Canadian ($10 billion; £8.3 billion), is anticipated to close this year.
Due to pressure from its largest shareholder, the Chinese insurance behemoth Ping An, HSBC has begun selling businesses.
Ping An has been publicly urging HSBC to separate its operations in Asia to boost earnings ever since last year.
In recent years, HSBC has also been laying off employees to help with cost-cutting.
Since the pandemic, HSBC said in November that it would be closing 114 more branches in the UK due to a significant decline in client traffic.
The bank promised to look for alternative employment for the impacted staff members but forewarned that some 100 individuals would lose their jobs.
This came after declarations that additional branches would close in 2021 and 2022.
However, Mr. Quinn intimated on Tuesday that there would be no cost-cutting whatsoever. “There will be no easing off at all,” he said.
We are currently taking into account extra severance costs of up to $300 million for 2023, he continued.
In an effort to slow the rate of price increases, central banks all around the world have recently increased interest rates.
The Bank of England raised UK interest rates in December to their highest level in 14 years.
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— Positive Money (@PositiveMoneyUK) February 17, 2023
Barclays and NatWest have announced a collective £12,100,000,000 of profits for 2022.
We expect similarly huge results from HSBC and Lloyd's Bank next week.
Join our call for @Jeremy_Hunt
to tax these unearned excess profits now 👇https://t.co/M1mkvU1FKw pic.twitter.com/rcRZnLZjS4
The cost of borrowing has also significantly increased due to actions by the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank.
Parliament in the UK questioned this month if the major banks in the nation were passing on increased interest rates to depositors.
The argument was mistakenly focused on the interest rates paid on easy-access savings accounts, which normally yield a return of less than 1%, according to the UK chief executives of HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest, and Barclays.
