Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: I was definitely ruthless about killing the complexity and the
Speaker 2: drag in the back. There is massive potential in this bank.
Speaker 2: Some of it needed to be unleashed. Things don't become
Speaker 2: complex by design. They end up becoming complex by lack
Speaker 2: of focus. You need it, We need it to be agile.
Speaker 2: So bringing the focus at the simplification will allow you
Speaker 2: to start dealing with it.
Speaker 1: I'm franc I Laqua and this is Leaders, the podcast
Speaker 1: that explores what drives the world's most influential people. Joining
Speaker 1: me this week is CHARLEL. Hendri, the chief executive of HSBC,
Speaker 1: one of the world's biggest banks, in the top job
Speaker 1: since September twenty twenty four, he's not shied away from
Speaker 1: the difficult decisions, including a huge restructure and slashing thousands
Speaker 1: of jobs, and while some might consider his methods ruthless,
Speaker 1: HSBC's share price has responded positively. It's roughly doubled to
Speaker 1: a record high. Andre El Hydrie's tenure after an eventful
Speaker 1: first year, I wanted to catch up with him and
Speaker 1: really dig into those management decisions, understand how he's evolved
Speaker 1: as a leader and hear how he's thinking about Ai Rash.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for speaking to us.
Speaker 2: Great to be with you, Francine.
Speaker 1: We were counting how many languages you spoke.
Speaker 2: Eight, So I've studied eight languages. Other people should judge
Speaker 2: if I speak them.
Speaker 1: Do you have a love for languages.
Speaker 2: I'm fascinated by languages because if you're fascinated by cultures,
Speaker 2: then you're fascinated by understanding how they think and how
Speaker 2: they express themselves, and that basically naturally links you to
Speaker 2: understanding their language.
Speaker 1: Can you only be a good leader if you understand people?
Speaker 2: I think you have to definitely listen, and if you
Speaker 2: can listen in their own language, then even better.
Speaker 1: You grew up in Lebanon, yes, and what was your
Speaker 1: early childhood like?
Speaker 2: So I grew up in Lebanon. At age eighteen, I
Speaker 2: moved to France for my university. I then picked an
Speaker 2: internship in Germany, and by coincidence, I ended up doing
Speaker 2: an internship in banking. So I went back to Paris
Speaker 2: to finish my postgraduate degree in finance, statistics and economics
Speaker 2: because I enjoyed it, of course, and I picked up
Speaker 2: my first job in Japan and then back to London
Speaker 2: at that time up until the time where HSBC hired me,
Speaker 2: and that was exactly twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: At the time, you wanted to be an engineer, So
Speaker 1: what attracted you to finance?
Speaker 2: So I absolutely wanted to be an engineer. I studied
Speaker 2: as an engineer, and as you know, back to your
Speaker 2: question about languages, I had studied German for about ten
Speaker 2: or twelve years at that time, so I wanted to
Speaker 2: do an internship in Germany. The only internship I managed
Speaker 2: to land was an internship on the trading in Frankfurt.
Speaker 2: So I took it and then I got addicted to it.
Speaker 1: What did you like about it?
Speaker 2: I like the pace, but at that time, remember there's
Speaker 2: a lot of financial engineering, so you're still using a
Speaker 2: lot of your engineering skills. It still happens right and
Speaker 2: all sorts of you know, it's highly transferable to finance.
Speaker 2: I liked the accountability. I like the early responsibility you
Speaker 2: can get. So this is where it started.
Speaker 1: Did you always want to be a leader? Were you
Speaker 1: a leader as a child.
Speaker 2: It's difficult to define what a leader is, especially if
Speaker 2: leader a child. If it's a matter of living up
Speaker 2: with high standards and high values and high integrity and
Speaker 2: being able to project that around you. Then, yes, that
Speaker 2: started very early with me, But there are certain traits
Speaker 2: and leadership that really resonate with me. The first one
Speaker 2: is you lead by example. You walk the talk. You
Speaker 2: demonstrate that things apply to you as they would apply
Speaker 2: to anybody else, that you expect them to be applied to,
Speaker 2: and you don't never make an exception for yourself.
Speaker 1: When you look at leadership, how does I guess? The
Speaker 1: young formative ears, you know, give you a sense of
Speaker 1: who you will become.
Speaker 2: You learn, and you feel what is right and what
Speaker 2: is not right, and a number of people around you,
Speaker 2: including my direct family, my parents, kind of form part
Speaker 2: of how you think and what ethical standards you set
Speaker 2: yourself and the integrity by which you operate. And then
Speaker 2: sometimes around you you feel things aren't right or aren't fair,
Speaker 2: and it's very important to stand your line, to hold
Speaker 2: your line.
Speaker 1: That's difficult. How do you do that?
Speaker 2: It is difficult. Discipline, It's very important to hold the discipline,
Speaker 2: and it's very important to think of yourself as your
Speaker 2: own brand. If you want your own brand to remain
Speaker 2: the brand of integrity, then it's very important you stick
Speaker 2: to it.
Speaker 1: I've heard, I mean, some chief executive see it as
Speaker 1: you know, they decided from very early on who they
Speaker 1: did not want to be. Is it true using who
Speaker 1: you do not want to be or who you want
Speaker 1: to be what's easiest?
Speaker 2: I think both go hand in hand. It's very important
Speaker 2: to realize who you want to be, and by competison,
Speaker 2: realize also what are the traits you absolutely do not appreciate,
Speaker 2: do not to regard, and therefore that you want to
Speaker 2: stay away from.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about your I guess your your favorite
Speaker 1: pre CEO job at HSBC. Do you have you know
Speaker 1: a place in the world where you really kind of
Speaker 1: had to hone in on your leadership skills and understand
Speaker 1: the culture.
Speaker 2: I've spent twenty years at HSBC now, and there isn't
Speaker 2: a single geography on the planet where I spend that long.
Speaker 2: So there is a sense of belonging for me to
Speaker 2: HSBC that that supersedes any kind of physical attachment to
Speaker 2: any place with HSBC. I don't know if I can
Speaker 2: count now, however, many dozens and dozens and dozens of times,
Speaker 2: probably hundreds to places like Hong Kong, you know, one
Speaker 2: of the two HSBC home markets the midd least where
Speaker 2: I spend many years for HSBC, specifically in Dubai, but
Speaker 2: also rolling around the whole of them, at least Europe,
Speaker 2: of course, the US, Asia and as a whole. It's
Speaker 2: just amazing the opportunities you have to get there, and
Speaker 2: every time you're there, you spend time, you create more connections,
Speaker 2: you have an even deeper understanding. If I ask I
Speaker 2: bring ten people in the room and ask them how
Speaker 2: many geographies they worked for for HSBC, you would find
Speaker 2: people who tell you more than ten. That kind of experience, frankly,
Speaker 2: is unique.
Speaker 1: But if you look at, for example, some of the
Speaker 1: Wall Street banks are more cut through, but they pay
Speaker 1: their people a lot more. Is that something that you
Speaker 1: worry about.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's very important that we reward our people fairly,
Speaker 2: we reward our people competitively, and we reward performance. But
Speaker 2: that's not the only component. The other component is what
Speaker 2: is the environment in which they operate? Who are their colleagues,
Speaker 2: their bosses, what is their purpose? Who are they serving?
Speaker 2: Why they're serving them? Can they be their truths? Can
Speaker 2: they operate with the highest integrity standards as they wish to?
Speaker 2: All of that kind of form part of the value
Speaker 2: proposition HSPC offers it employees, and this is what makes
Speaker 2: the kind of equation collectively work for all our colleagues.
Speaker 1: After the break, we discuss how George al Hedri approached
Speaker 1: hspc's biggest restructure in a decade. Everybody has to make
Speaker 1: decisions big or small, but not everyone runs a bank
Speaker 1: with two hundred thousand employees. When al Hedri took over
Speaker 1: a CEO, he really wasted no time making his mark,
Speaker 1: ushering in a big restructure and laying off thousands of employees.
Speaker 1: So I was curious to understand how he thinks about
Speaker 1: company wide challenges and what gave him the courage to
Speaker 1: move so fast and so decisively. So talking to me
Speaker 1: about when you get the call that you've been appointed
Speaker 1: as chief executive, what's your first thought?
Speaker 2: Of course, the first thought is to be humbled and
Speaker 2: honored for being given this fantastic responsibility. But what really
Speaker 2: mattered for me is what I can do for this bank,
Speaker 2: not who I was or what my title was in
Speaker 2: this bank. Now it so happens, there's a lot you
Speaker 2: can do as a group CEO in terms of affecting
Speaker 2: change or affecting bringing potential to the bank. So it
Speaker 2: was therefore the great opportunity for me to be able
Speaker 2: to do what I really set out to do and
Speaker 2: what I had the full support of the board to do.
Speaker 1: You moved fast? Does a chief executive need to move
Speaker 1: fast to kind of say right, this is the change
Speaker 1: and this is what we need to be and is
Speaker 1: it all on you or did you governed by consensus?
Speaker 2: A few things on that. The first one is there
Speaker 2: is massive potential in this bank. Some of it needed
Speaker 2: to be unleashed, It needed to be unlocked, and some
Speaker 2: of that unlocking of the potential had to go through
Speaker 2: re engineering the bank, rewiring the bank so that we
Speaker 2: can unlock this POTENTI then, having been the bank twenty years,
Speaker 2: operating in a number of geographies and businesses and functions myself,
Speaker 2: I've built a lot of experience and a very large
Speaker 2: network of colleagues who have been also feeding their input
Speaker 2: and their concerns, which kind of forms a big set
Speaker 2: of action book if you want. And then, third, very importantly,
Speaker 2: I was already sitting at the board as a group
Speaker 2: cf or before I took the coole, and all these
Speaker 2: conversations I was having with my board and if you
Speaker 2: have the support of the board, you of course have
Speaker 2: the kind of right to be able to act quickly.
Speaker 1: But what was the most difficult thing about that first
Speaker 1: restructuring plan? Because you have to get rid of units
Speaker 1: that maybe you're attached to having worked here for so long,
Speaker 1: there's people that you like that maybe you've had to
Speaker 1: move around again. Was it intellectual or are you ruthless
Speaker 1: about it?
Speaker 2: I was definitely ruthless about killing the complexity and the
Speaker 2: drag in the back. The most difficult part is when
Speaker 2: you have to separate with some of your colleagues. I
Speaker 2: think we've been very thoughtful, We've been very considered it.
Speaker 2: We've done it, hopefully the right way and the most
Speaker 2: respectful way for the benefit ultimately of the firm and
Speaker 2: its customers. You need it, We need it to be agile,
Speaker 2: we need it to be ready for a modern world,
Speaker 2: and to be that, we need it to be simple.
Speaker 2: And therefore, you know, kind of everything then drives what
Speaker 2: decisions you take from that mission statement?
Speaker 1: How did the bank become so complex? And again, this
Speaker 1: is something that actually most organizations have to face as
Speaker 1: they grow. I guess there's various factions or a lot
Speaker 1: of companies actually could just become much more simple and simplified.
Speaker 1: What did you see?
Speaker 2: Entropy is a feature. Entropy tends to increase, which means
Speaker 2: complexity if you do nothing about it, tends to increase
Speaker 2: rather than decrease. So things don't become complex by design.
Speaker 2: They end up becoming complex by lack of focus. So
Speaker 2: bringing the focus at the simplification will allow you to
Speaker 2: start dealing with it. That's the first observation. Section observation
Speaker 2: is you have to be extremely methodical. What has created
Speaker 2: the complexity? How can it be addressed methodically? Try to
Speaker 2: identify ways to be simple. Some of the ways to
Speaker 2: be simple is to decide not to do certain things,
Speaker 2: and this is why we exited a number of activities.
Speaker 2: The third thing is when you're taking structured decisions, you
Speaker 2: have to start from the top. You can't take structured
Speaker 2: decision from the bottoms up. This is why the first
Speaker 2: decision structurally I've taken relates to simplifying the group operating committee.
Speaker 2: We moved from more than twenty people to about twelve.
Speaker 2: More importantly, we moved from zero percent singular accountability everything
Speaker 2: had dual or multiple accountability to now about sixty percent
Speaker 2: of our revenues generated under singular accountability, so that's important.
Speaker 2: And then the last thing, Francine is to be patient.
Speaker 2: We're not solving simplification overnight. It's going to be a
Speaker 2: journey and we have to be relentless at that journey,
Speaker 2: quarta after water, month after month until we get the
Speaker 2: desired outcomes. And that journey is still on, like we're
Speaker 2: not there yet.
Speaker 1: But as a big chief executive of a big bank,
Speaker 1: you basically have the shareholders that you need to please,
Speaker 1: so simplification may be help with them understanding what the
Speaker 1: bank wants to become. You have your clients, and then
Speaker 1: you also have the employees. How difficult is it to
Speaker 1: juggle these? You know, three masters.
Speaker 2: So there is one consideration, which fortunately the three masters
Speaker 2: align on, is being best at what you do. Your
Speaker 2: customers want you to be the best at what you
Speaker 2: serve them. With customers take your shareholders will pay you
Speaker 2: for what you're best at doing. They won't give you
Speaker 2: valuation for something that your average. They will give you
Speaker 2: valuation for where you really command, where you're an authority
Speaker 2: in being able to provide that service or that product
Speaker 2: and that market. So the shareholders aligned to be the best,
Speaker 2: and then our colleagues want to win. Our colleagues are
Speaker 2: in a competitive landscape and they want to win, and
Speaker 2: they basically thrive when they're when we're doing living the
Speaker 2: best we can and when we're delivering best outcomes and
Speaker 2: we're basically the best at what we do. So you know,
Speaker 2: you take this as a guiding thread and you say,
Speaker 2: let's focus on that focus where we can grow in
Speaker 2: areas where we're the most competitively advantaged, and then everybody aligns, colleagues,
Speaker 2: clients and shareholders.
Speaker 1: Is that why you learned Mandarin? You want it to
Speaker 1: be the best for HSBC. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm the best at HSBC speaking Mandarin,
Speaker 2: that's far from it.
Speaker 1: But you're the first co two speak Mandarin.
Speaker 2: Possibly, Yes. I think what is important is to gain
Speaker 2: access to understanding the culture in which HSBC operates, and
Speaker 2: obviously one of the very important cultures within HSBC as
Speaker 2: a whole, but that is probably one of the least
Speaker 2: understood for say, people living in you know, in London
Speaker 2: like I'm living now, is understanding the Chinese culture. And
Speaker 2: you know, if you really want to understand the Chinese
Speaker 2: way of thinking, the way of reasoning, the way of
Speaker 2: negotiating or engaging or presenting simply, then there is no
Speaker 2: better way than kind of put the pain and trying
Speaker 2: to learn the language and see how it's done in
Speaker 2: the language.
Speaker 1: It was quite bold because you took a sabbatical for it.
Speaker 1: Was it a difficult decision or did you automatically know
Speaker 1: this was the right way to answer service your clients.
Speaker 2: First, I knew if I really wanted to make a
Speaker 2: leap frog in my early starts in Mandarin, it needed
Speaker 2: much more time than I could give it. Now I'm
Speaker 2: proud to say I still take lessons. Whether I'm progressing
Speaker 2: or not, I don't know, but I'm still taking lessons.
Speaker 2: I'm maintaining that you know that job. But there needed
Speaker 2: to be a leapfrog at the start, which is sabbatical
Speaker 2: as I helped.
Speaker 1: Was it for yourself or was it for the bank?
Speaker 1: Because it's interesting it was it was Mandarin and nothing
Speaker 1: and not something else. No.
Speaker 2: Well, look, I mean I've taken six month out and
Speaker 2: there are a number of things I achieved during those
Speaker 2: six months, some of them personal, some of them professional.
Speaker 2: But yes, it was full on.
Speaker 1: When we come back. Jejahal Hedri tells me how artificial
Speaker 1: intelligence is shaping HSBC and the future of banking. The
Speaker 1: future is AI, and in our conversation, el had remade
Speaker 1: that very evident. But bringing colleagues along for the ride
Speaker 1: is one of his new leadership challenges. Talk to me
Speaker 1: about in simple terms, right, how you see the bank
Speaker 1: in five years.
Speaker 2: The world is moving fast. We need to move fast.
Speaker 2: Our customers are moving fast. We need to move fast.
Speaker 2: Their needs today will be different tomorrow, their goals today
Speaker 2: will be different tomorrow, and we need to be continuously
Speaker 2: adapting to their evolving needs and their evolving goals.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: There are the few key components that can achieve this.
Speaker 2: Most importantly, the first component is the human touch. Okay,
Speaker 2: we're still in a very much believer in a model
Speaker 2: where they'll always be a person to talk to. So
Speaker 2: we invest in our relationship management, we invest in our
Speaker 2: people's skills and capabilities, we invest in our peace people simply.
Speaker 1: So we're not being replaced by AI.
Speaker 2: So that's the second component is we absolutely need to
Speaker 2: be innovation ready and embrace it and enable our capabilities
Speaker 2: and be able to embrace in number of emerging payments
Speaker 2: through blockchain or tokenized deposits, all of which we launch,
Speaker 2: by the way, but you know that's an evolving world,
Speaker 2: but also being gen AI ready in particular, I mean
Speaker 2: AI has been with us for fifteen years, but gen
Speaker 2: AI is clearly bringing something new to the equation. Now
Speaker 2: we have more than one hundred cases, of which about
Speaker 2: half of them are already alive in production that are
Speaker 2: transformational and they're going to change the way we as
Speaker 2: humans operate. And while we as humans will not be
Speaker 2: replaced by AI, if we don't know how to embrace
Speaker 2: it and upskill ourselves using it, we will become obsolete.
Speaker 2: So this is why my call to our colleagues has
Speaker 2: been to bring all all of them along the journey
Speaker 2: of how can we best use GENI opportunities Because for
Speaker 2: those who don't use them, there is a real risk
Speaker 2: that they will be displaced. But those who will use
Speaker 2: them are going to be part of the future.
Speaker 1: But if you're a young kid today and you want
Speaker 1: to get into banking, what do you study?
Speaker 2: Let me try to answer it with two prong approach.
Speaker 2: The first one GENI specific. Right, we now rolled to
Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy thousand of our colleagues internal productivity
Speaker 2: tools that can materially improve their capabilities of reading documents,
Speaker 2: reading emails, writing documents emails, queering challenging processes. One hundred
Speaker 2: and seventy thousand of our employees, I mean, so soon
Speaker 2: all the way to the two hundred plus thousand employees.
Speaker 2: Of course, I will be monitoring usage. I'll be monitoring
Speaker 2: super usage. Those will be the most you know, kind
Speaker 2: of influencing among their colleagues to drive the utilization. But
Speaker 2: utilization is not optional, because that's how people remain very
Speaker 2: relevant in the future workforce five years down the road.
Speaker 2: But we're using JENI in wealth, we're using GENI in markets,
Speaker 2: We're using GENI in contact centers. We're using JENI. Of
Speaker 2: course in technology. Now thirty thousand of our technologists engineers
Speaker 2: are enabled with GENI. The speed at which we're able
Speaker 2: to patch, for say, code weaknesses or kind of vulnerabilities
Speaker 2: is ten times faster already now than was the case
Speaker 2: last year. Ten times are we're.
Speaker 1: Not talking in twelve months.
Speaker 2: In twelve months, we're not talking we're not talking some
Speaker 2: productivity in five years. We're talking productivity already here. This
Speaker 2: is a huge transformation. So you can imagine how important
Speaker 2: it is now. I go back to the first part
Speaker 2: of your question from the scene, is what are the
Speaker 2: skills that are needed for banks? I would say there
Speaker 2: is no one particular skill that's going to be critical,
Speaker 2: but it is going to be the ability to learn.
Speaker 2: Because you can come in a bank coming from an
Speaker 2: engineering background, from a technology background, from an accounting background.
Speaker 2: But once you're in the bank, your career, the customer's
Speaker 2: expectation are such that you're going to have to continue
Speaker 2: to do art and a few think you know it all.
Speaker 2: Then there's no place for those In an evolving landscape today,
Speaker 2: the most important learning capability is how to best embrace
Speaker 2: gen AI and innovation in general.
Speaker 1: Are you surprised that these, you know, tariffs and trade
Speaker 1: barriers that have been erected really in twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: haven't had that much of a material impact.
Speaker 2: So a couple of things here, Francine that are interesting.
Speaker 2: The first one is tariff in and of themselves aren't
Speaker 2: a new feature of global trade. There've always was forms
Speaker 2: after What was more new in twenty twenty five is
Speaker 2: the speed at which both traffs have been erected, but
Speaker 2: also deals have been negotiated to reduce tariffs or removed there.
Speaker 2: So that was kind of the new feature. What's also
Speaker 2: important to note is that yes, trade found its way,
Speaker 2: and we've seen trade patterns between Asian and Middle East,
Speaker 2: or within in Asia, or to some extent also between
Speaker 2: Asia and Europe that have outgrown some of the corridors
Speaker 2: that have taken you know, that that have been slower
Speaker 2: in terms of trade growth, or that have taken a
Speaker 2: kind of setback in terms of trade growth. What's most
Speaker 2: important with the reconfiguration of trade patterns is that based
Speaker 2: on our internal research, we believe the addition to GDP
Speaker 2: that these new trade patterns within Asia will bring to
Speaker 2: Asia will three times more than offset the loss of
Speaker 2: GDP that will be, you know, due to the reduction
Speaker 2: of trade with the US. So there is clearly you know,
Speaker 2: value creation when we see Asia buying Asia and the
Speaker 2: trade these trade patterns and these trade corridors grow because
Speaker 2: they're driving not only trade, but they're driving FTI, they're
Speaker 2: driving employment, they're driving domestic growth as much as it
Speaker 2: is trade growth.
Speaker 1: I mean, this year, the next couple of years seems
Speaker 1: to be much more complicated because of geopolitics. You have
Speaker 1: this massive fight between the US and China, Europe somewhere
Speaker 1: in the middle of the UK has to find its footing.
Speaker 1: How difficult is it to navigate geopolitics as HSBCCO.
Speaker 2: So look, there is always a guiding north star in
Speaker 2: managing international kind of relationship is what do our customers
Speaker 2: need from us? Because at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: whatever we're doing, we're doing it because we have customers
Speaker 2: asking us to help them with or to deliver it
Speaker 2: for them. Right, So, as long as you believe on
Speaker 2: this planet we will have loads and loads and loads
Speaker 2: and loads of international customers who are looking for supply
Speaker 2: chains around the planet, who are looking for resilience and
Speaker 2: their supply chains around the planet, who are also looking
Speaker 2: for consumer markets for their product and services around the
Speaker 2: planet to scale their capabilities. Then HSPC has a critical
Speaker 2: role to play.
Speaker 1: All right, rapid fire your top tips for holding highly
Speaker 1: effective meetings.
Speaker 2: Make decisions. A poor decision is always better than no
Speaker 2: decision because you can always change a poor decision and
Speaker 2: align it and adapt it. No decision leads to paralysis.
Speaker 1: How do you overcome self doubt or impostor syndrome?
Speaker 2: Always go to first principles? What is your mission and
Speaker 2: is what you're doing aligned to your mission. There are
Speaker 2: various leadership principles that I live by. An important one
Speaker 2: is great leaders build better leaders? Am I on that journey?
Speaker 2: Do I have great leaders around me that I'm helping build?
Speaker 1: What honest advice do you try to impart someone you
Speaker 1: identify with having great potential?
Speaker 2: Enjoy it. You can't be too worked out and not
Speaker 2: surround things. It's very important to take always step back
Speaker 2: a deep breath and just do it the way that
Speaker 2: you feel you're enjoying it, because you'll be much more impactful.
Speaker 1: I love that. Have fun along the way, right, Georsh,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for listen.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this episode of Leaders with Francis Laqua,
Speaker 1: the podcast. If you like our show, please rate, review,
Speaker 1: and subscribe Now we've been getting a lot of great
Speaker 1: feedback on LinkedIn and on Instagram, but if you could
Speaker 1: leave a rating and a note wherever you're listening, it
Speaker 1: would really help more people find the show. And if
Speaker 1: you want to watch the show also, please find us
Speaker 1: on YouTube. This episode was hosted by Nik Francis Laqua.
Speaker 1: It was produced by Atalandi Dixon, Summersaudi and Moses and
Speaker 1: dam Amy Keen is the executive producer of Talk podcasts.
Speaker 1: Sound designed by Blake Maples and Aaron Casper. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to George al Hedri and the team at HSBC