HSBC: A year of transition

Last year was always going to be one of transition for HSBC. The bank’s long-serving top duo – chief executive Stuart Gulliver and executive chairman Douglas Flint – both stepped down from the business.

Fortunately, the handover – to life-long insider, John Flint, as chief executive, and to the bank’s first-ever external appointment to a new role as nonexecutive chairman, Mark Tucker – was a great deal smoother than it had been when Gulliver took the reins seven years earlier.