HSBC: The world’s interim bank

To be in HSBC senior management is to be one of two things.

Traditionally, you were a dyed-in-the-wool lifer, more often than not making the slow crawl to the top through retail and commercial banking. More recently, you might have been an iconoclast outsider, with – whisper it quietly – ideas from elsewhere. A bear in a China shop.

Either way, at the HSBC of today, the lifers are being cleared out and the institution has the feeling of being at an interim point, a crossroads.