0005.HK - HSBC Holdings plc
| Previous close | 57.200 |
| Open | 57.150 |
| Bid | 57.450 x 0 |
| Ask | 57.500 x 0 |
| Day's range | 57.150 - 57.550 |
| 52-week range | 55.300 - 70.500 |
| Volume | 15,047,538 |
| Avg. volume | 18,152,352 |
| Market cap | 1.151T |
| Beta (3Y monthly) | 0.56 |
| PE ratio (TTM) | 11.64 |
| EPS (TTM) | 4.935 |
| Earnings date | N/A |
| Forward dividend & yield | 3.13 (5.48%) |
| Ex-dividend date | 2019-10-10 |
| 1y target est | 10.07 |
- Bloomberg
Video-Conference App Zoom Is a Rare Winner in Hong Kong Protests
(Bloomberg) -- As protests jolt Hong Kong business, organizations from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to universities are adapting by going digital, switching to video-conferencing app Zoom to conduct online investor briefings and virtual lectures.Zoom Video Communications Inc. joins a number of internet services that have taken off since the unrest began over the summer, from mobile messenger Telegram to work-at-home apps. In a financial hub that thrives on face-to-face deal-making and power lunches, Zoom helps fill a void created by transport disruptions and concerns about personal safety.Hong Kong’s business community leans on the app’s features, which include slide-sharing and support for up to 1,000 call participants, to carry on cross-border communications and with mainland China, where WhatsApp, Telegram and Google alternatives are banned. There’s a local version of Zoom that’s compatible, which is why the app’s downloads in Hong Kong soared 460% in November, after an escalation in protest violence first triggered a spike in September, according to researcher Sensor Tower.Read more: Zoom’s Eric Yuan, the CEO Who Made Videoconferencing Bearable“As schools continue to be in lock-down mode, we’ve had to move our lectures online to minimize disruption,” said Cheung Siu Wai, a professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, adding Skype has been another option.Now valued at $19 billion, Zoom’s shares have almost doubled since listing on the Nasdaq this year. It’s unclear how the spike in downloads may translate into revenue growth for Zoom, founded by Chinese emigrant Eric Yuan, who now resides in California.The company has various pricing tiers and recently added HSBC to a roster of paying clients that includes Uber Technologies Inc. and Zendesk Inc., underpinning 85% growth in revenue to $167 million in the October quarter. Representatives for the company, which is backed by investors including Salesforce.com Inc., Tiger Global and Qualcomm Inc., declined to comment on how the Hong Kong protests have affected its business.”With the periodic traffic disruptions, our colleagues have no choice but to use video-conferencing apps,” said Derek Chan, co-founder of Master Concept, a Hong Kong-based cloud service provider.To contact the reporters on this story: Carol Zhong in Hong Kong at yzhong71@bloomberg.net;Lulu Yilun Chen in Hong Kong at ychen447@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, Vlad SavovFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Reuters - UK Focus
Big European banks face call to end funding for firms building coal-fired plants
Some of Europe's biggest banks are being challenged by environmental groups to sever all lending to utilities which they say are still developing new coal-fired power plants. The call comes as some 190 countries meet in Madrid to assess progress on the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which demands a virtual end to coal power by 2050. A United Nations report last year said almost all coal-fired power plants would need to close by the middle of this century to curb a rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, in line with the level scientists say is needed to stave off the worst effects of climate change.
- Reuters - UK Focus
UPDATE 1-UK regulators call time on lengthy glitches in banking services
Regulators made proposals on Thursday to strengthen the ability of banks and payment firms in Britain to cope with major incidents and maintain key services with minimum interruption. The Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority have proposed that banks, insurers, investment firms, exchanges and financial market infrastructure (FMIs) firms like Visa that make payments possible, set "impact tolerances" for important services. Firms themselves would quantify the maximum level of disruption they would tolerate in terms of time, volume of business or number of customers affected.
- Reuters - UK Focus
UPDATE 2-FTSE trails Europe as exporters dip, Glencore tumbles
London's FTSE 100 slid on Thursday due to a 9% plunge in Glencore after news of a bribery investigation and as dollar earners fell with sterling gaining on growing hopes that the upcoming election will not result in a hung parliament. The blue-chip FTSE 100 index ended 0.7% lower, lagging its peers in Europe and on Wall Street. The more domestically focused mid-cap index, the FTSE 250 , added 0.2%, led higher by a near 20% surge in home furnishings retailer Dunelm after it raised profit expectations.
- Bloomberg
HSBC to Leapfrog Barclays in Equity Rankings on Aramco Coup
(Bloomberg) -- Saudi Aramco’s record-shattering stock market debut is redrawing the league tables.HSBC Holdings Plc will be catapulted into the top 10 equity arrangers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for the first time in five years, kicking Barclays Plc off the list after it missed out on the world’s biggest initial public offering.Aramco alone will be enough to move HSBC up two spots to 10th place on the main league table tracking stock offerings in EMEA, according to an analysis of Bloomberg data. Societe Generale SA, which had a junior role in the oil giant’s listing, will advance one spot to 9th place after the IPO prices Thursday.Barclays is poised to fall two spots to 11th place. If there are no significant changes in the next few weeks, this could be the first full year since 2012 that Barclays hasn’t been in the top 10, Bloomberg data show. The calculations assume that Aramco prices at the top end of its marketed range as expected, hitting its full fundraising target of $25.6 billion.Banks spent years wooing Aramco for a spot on the stock offering, which brings them bragging rights even though they will earn small fees for their work on the deal. JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the top firms on the Aramco listing, is set to regain its spot as the No. 2 IPO bank globally after the deal. It replaces China International Capital Corp., which is falling two spots to 4th place, and will trail only Morgan Stanley.BOC International Holdings Ltd., the only Chinese investment bank to get a role on the Aramco offering, will vault 11 spots higher to 20th place on the global IPO league table when Aramco prices, the Bloomberg analysis shows. It’s been three years since the state-backed firm was at that level.More than two dozen banks are sharing the Aramco IPO fees, and most will barely make enough to cover their costs after the company decided to shun international marketing of the deal, Bloomberg News has reported. Still, HSBC will benefit more than others. It’s one of three banks, along with Saudi lenders NCB Capital and Samba Financial Group, that oversaw the collection of investor orders after most Wall Street banks were sidelined, people with knowledge of the matter have said.For HSBC, its long-standing local ties could be a major reason for its prominence on the Aramco deal. Its presence in the Middle East dates back to 1889, when the Imperial Bank of Persia was founded. That firm, later known as the British Bank of the Middle East, expanded across the Gulf before being acquired by HSBC in 1959.Local TiesWhen banking activities in much of the region were nationalized in the 1960s and 1970s, HSBC kept its presence in Saudi Arabia through a stake in the newly-organized Saudi British Bank, known as SABB. It doubled down on the kingdom last year, combining SABB with Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’s local affiliate to create Saudi Arabia’s third-biggest lender.A number of Middle Eastern banks are getting a rare shot at the limelight thanks to Aramco. EFG-Hermes Holding will jump 19 spots on the EMEA equity rankings to No. 20 once the Aramco IPO prices. This will be the first time the Egyptian bank has been in the top 20, according to Bloomberg data going back to 1999.EFG will also move 55 spots up the global IPO league table, to No. 28. Riyadh-based Samba Financial Group will advance 61 spots to No. 29.(Updates banker table to add special advisers.)\--With assistance from Dimitri Quemard (Global Data).To contact the reporter on this story: Ben Scent in London at bscent@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Scent at bscent@bloomberg.net, Marion DakersFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Bloomberg
Behold the Most Volatile Call for Bond Yields
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Stay in one part of the market long enough and you’re bound to know which strategists tend to be bullish and which ones seem permanently bearish. U.S. Treasuries are no exception. Just consider these two divergent views from the ranks of the Federal Reserve’s primary dealers:Steven Major at HSBC Holdings Plc is among those who have long believed in lower-for-longer U.S. interest rates. He and I talked in mid-2016, when Treasury yields hit all-time lows, about how structural forces such as an aging global population create a nearly insatiable demand for safe fixed-income assets. He predicts the benchmark 10-year yield will finish 2020 at around 1.5%, compared with a median estimate of 2% in a Bloomberg survey. That’s bullish.His polar opposite might just be Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities. Dating to at least mid-2017, Stanley’s prediction for the 10-year Treasury yield has always exceeded the median estimate.(1)That hasn’t changed for 2020 — he’s the only analyst among the 49 surveyed to see the benchmark U.S. yield back at 3% at the end of next year. That’s bearish.And then there’s John Dunham, who shatters the conventional labels. Dunham, managing partner at John Dunham and Associates, is more bearish on bonds in the coming months than anyone. He predicts 10-year yields will soar to 2.75% by the end of June and climb to 3.03% by the end of September. Even Stanley sees them merely gliding to 2.5% at mid-year and then 2.8% at the end of the third quarter. In Dunham’s scenario, current owners of 10-year notes would face a roughly 10% loss in 10 months.If Dunham’s right, though, those investors ought to hold on for dear life. By mid-2021, he suddenly becomes one of the biggest bond bulls on Wall Street, forecasting 10-year yields at 1.3% for the rest of that year. For those keeping track at home, that’s an even lower forecast than Major’s 1.5% estimate for year-end 2020.This type of market swing, of course, is hardly unprecedented. In fact, the 10-year Treasury yield plunged from 3.25% in November 2018 to just 1.43% in early September as bond traders shifted from expecting more Fed interest-rate increases to rapidly pricing in easier monetary policy. That 182-basis-point range is right in line with the type of move that Dunham envisions. Just on Tuesday, long-term Treasury yields tumbled 10 basis points, the sharpest drop since August.Still, few analysts (if any at all) actually come out and predict that sort of volatility. The tried-and-true playbook is to call for interest rates to rise gradually or fall from their current levels and then tweak those forecasts as the market moves. You just don’t see a forecast slice through the median and average as drastically as Dunham’s does.So, what explains such a turn of events? To Dunham, it’s fairly straightforward: Inflation will take off for a short period in 2020, followed by a recession after the U.S. presidential election (he hasn’t predicted who will win it). He explained his view to me over the phone:“I believe that the administration is going to just do everything it can to crank out money into the economy until the election, just to keep it going. And after the election, they’re not going to ... That in many ways is driving our forecast for a recession happening right after the election. Usually the first quarter is terrible anyway, so that makes good sense that the first quarter would be the time we would tumble into recession.When you start looking at business cost factors, the employment cost index has really been rising rapidly since the recession, we’re seeing the dollar up a lot, that takes up prices. The only thing that’s really been holding things down is commodity prices have been relatively flat. That’s going to turn at some point.We’ve been thinking — and I’ve been wrong about this, admittedly — that there will be decent inflation coming up for a while. We don’t model the Federal Reserve as independent, we model it as a trailing factor. It follows interest rates. That’s why we have them pushing up interest rates, up to that point that we hit recession.”While Dunham doubts the Fed has any ability to stoke inflation, it’s worth noting that just this week, the Financial Times published an article that said the central bank was considering a rule that would allow price growth to run above its 2% target in a “make-up strategy” for years of undershooting its goal. That has interest-rate strategists like Mark Cabana at Bank of America Corp. thinking that current market-implied inflation rates are probably too low.Dunham has called for a recession before. He said in mid-2015 that “we’re now at the peak of the business cycle. And over the next year, year-and-a-half, the business cycle is going to start to turn back into recession.” While that didn’t quite pan out, in that period here’s what did happen: The U.S. stock market swooned, real gross domestic product nearly turned negative and 10-year Treasury yields fell to unprecedented lows.His recession timeline also matches up with the historical signal given by the inverted U.S. yield curve. Three-month Treasury bills yielded more than 10-year notes for much of the period between late May and mid-October. That has usually indicated an economic downturn within 18 months or so. The curve from two to 10 years flipped to negative for a brief stretch in August. Cast those dates 18 months forward, and it’s right around the turn of the calendar from 2020 to 2021.Whether the world’s biggest economy follows that traditional rule of thumb is anyone’s guess. And, to be sure, the Fed has tried time and again to lift inflation only to see its preferred gauge remain stubbornly below 2% for almost all of the past decade. A lot will have to go right — and then wrong — for Dunham’s forecast to play out.At the same time, the likelihood that Treasury yields will hug the median in the coming year seems about equally as far-fetched. Last December, the median analyst forecast for where the 10-year yield would be at the end of 2019 was 3.32%. That’s shaping up to be off by about 150 basis points. It was a closer call in 2018, thanks in large part to the end-of-year bond rally, but the December 2017 consensus still wound up missing by a quarter-point.In other words, predicting the future is hard. Might as well forecast boldly.(1) I'm not including estimates that are a month or two from expiring, which all tend to converge to the prevailing yield level.To contact the author of this story: Brian Chappatta at bchappatta1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Niemi at dniemi1@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Brian Chappatta is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering debt markets. He previously covered bonds for Bloomberg News. He is also a CFA charterholder.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Reuters - UK Focus
UPDATE 2-FTSE gains on new Sino-U.S. trade hopes; mid-caps shine
London's FTSE 100 ended a four-day losing run on Wednesday as a report that the United States and China were moving closer to a trade deal lifted demand for risky assets, while optimism around the British election supported the mid-cap index. Markets rallied in a flurry after Bloomberg reported that Washington and Beijing were close to agreeing on the amount of tariffs that would be rolled back in a phase-one trade deal.
- Reuters - UK Focus
UPDATE 1-U.S. judge disqualifies Huawei lawyer from fraud, sanctions case
A U.S. judge on Tuesday disqualified James Cole, a Washington lawyer for China's Huawei, from defending the telecommunications equipment maker against charges of bank fraud and sanctions violations. Judge Ann Donnelly of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York, issued her order after federal prosecutors argued that Cole's prior work at the Department of Justice created conflicts of interest. Cole served as the deputy attorney general, the No. 2 official, at the Justice Department between 2011 and 2015.
- Stockopedia
Should we be worried about HSBC's Quality Rank?
Good quality companies can offer a lot of comfort to investors. They tend to be strong, stable, profitable firms that deliver predictable returns, have pricing8230;
- Fool.co.uk
Top shares for December 2019
We asked our freelance writers to share their top stock picks for the month.
- Fool.co.uk
Will restructuring be good for the HSBC share price?
As it makes efforts to focus on it Asian business, what does the future have in store for HSBC shares?
- Bloomberg
Apple’s AirPods Fire Up One of Asia’s Top Stocks in 2019
(Bloomberg) -- Luxshare Precision Industry Co. has more than tripled this year, outperforming virtually every major stock traded in the Asia Pacific and underscoring the importance of a certain Apple Inc. product the Chinese company assembles: AirPods.Commanding a 50% share of the nascent true wireless earphones market -- defined by earbuds that have no wired connection between each other or to the music source -- Apple’s AirPods have quickly become an important growth driver for the Cupertino, California company. Wearables are Apple’s fastest-growing category, up 41% in 2019, and are filling in for the iPhone as the company’s growth driver for hardware sales, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst John Butler said.In 2019, AirPods are expected to double to 60 million, rising to 90 million in 2020 and 120 million in 2021, according to Credit Suisse analyst Kyna Wong. Luxshare stands to be the biggest beneficiary of that increase in production demand. It’s the fifth-best performer this year in the MSCI Asia Pacific Index and the fourth biggest gainer on the MSCI China Index. Rival GoerTek Inc. has also surged, climbing more than 180% this year on optimism over stronger demand for AirPods.Read more: Apple AirPods Shipments Are Said to Double to 60 Million in 2019“Annual shipments of AirPods will rise to as many as the iPhone’s in the future,” said Jeff Pu, analyst at GF Securities. “AirPods are expected to be the biggest earnings growth driver among Apple’s hardware devices in the coming years.”Luxshare typically produces basic tech accessories and components, such as cables, chargers and antennas. The AirPods stand out as a higher-value item, which contributed 26% of Luxshare’s revenue in 2018, according to HSBC analyst Frank He. He forecasts that share to grow to as high as 50% in 2020. He also notes that Luxshare is the sole supplier of Apple’s upgraded AirPods Pro model, launched in October, which he estimates will make up as much as 25% of AirPods shipments next year.While Luxshare has grabbed the largest slice of the pie so far, rivals like GoerTek are continually upgrading and vying for more of the lucrative AirPods business. The company’s exclusivity as sole AirPods Pro supplier is unlikely to last, and so it’s not guaranteed to capture all of the demand growth that’s expected. Luxshare’s unprecedented rally also means it’s now trading at a two-year blended forward price-earnings ratio of about 32, well above the roughly 24 sector average.Both Wong and He have recently upgraded their earnings estimates for Luxshare through 2021, citing the increased AirPods demand and improved average selling price. In a research note from Nov. 18, Goldman Sachs analysts including Verena Jeng agreed, saying “The higher ASP coupled with strong market demand from a low base make AirPods Luxshare’s major revenue and gross profit contributor.”(Updates share moves from the second paragraph)To contact the reporters on this story: Cindy Wang in Taipei at hwang61@bloomberg.net;Lee Miller in Bangkok at lmiller@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, Vlad SavovFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Reuters - UK Focus
Barclays joins rivals with cuts to CEO pension perks
Barclays is planning to cut the 396,000 pounds ($508,068) pension allowance it pays Chief Executive Jes Staley by around half, echoing moves by rivals who have pledged to rein in executive pension perks following a campaign by investors. The possible changes follow protests from investors and employee unions over the disparity between pension payouts offered to Britain's top bank bosses and their staff.
- Reuters - UK Focus
UPDATE 2-FTSE trips on ex-div trade, U.S.-China trade doubts
London's FTSE 100 retreated from a near four-month high on Thursday, weighed down by stocks trading ex-dividend and as U.S. ratification of legislation on Hong Kong raised concerns that progress in trade talks with China may be undone. The blue-chip index fell 0.2% after four straight days of gains, with Vodafone giving up nearly 4% and utility National Grid shedding almost 3% as they traded without entitlement to a dividend pay-out.
- Bloomberg
Dear Alibaba, Thank You for the $10 Trillion Gift
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Has the golden age of asset management finally arrived in Asia? For years, Asia’s hottest unicorns left their homelands to list in New York for one simple reason: a deep pool of U.S. money. And they have been rewarded. From Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to JD.com Inc., more than a dozen Chinese companies listed there have a market capitalization of $10 billion or more. But Alibaba’s Hong Kong listing may be changing things. The e-commerce giant raised about $11 billion in the city’s largest issuance of stock since 2010, with about one-third of the tranche taken up by mainland Chinese fund managers. Other regional buyers were enthusiastic, too. Taiwan’s life insurer Fubon Financial Holding Co., for instance, placed a $500 million order.This all goes to show that Asian investors are just as wealthy and eager as those in New York, which could go a long way toward making Hong Kong and Singapore more attractive listing venues. The region’s aging savers have amassed more than $10 trillion of wealth in the form of pension funds, mutual funds and insurance policies, HSBC Holdings Plc estimates.(1) With billions to deploy, Taiwan’s insurers and China’s mutual funds may find benefits to trading stocks in their own time zone, if only for their portfolio managers’ work-life balance. Asia’s bustling IPO market also bodes well for the region’s restless unicorns, whose listing window in the U.S. is closing fast after a series of high-profile flops. If Americans can’t stomach Uber Technologies Inc., how will they have an appetite for Southeast Asian clones like Grab or Go-Jek? To make matters worse, U.S. investors have been pulling money out of emerging markets over the past several months. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index peaked in January 2018, while the S&P 500 Index continues to hit daily records.There's one major caveat, however. Local investors can be a tough sell. Foreign money managers tend to think of Asia's biggest startups as a proxy for the macro scene, much in the same way that New York investors saw Alibaba as a bet on China's rising consumer class. Domestic players, on the other hand, are living and breathing the macro picture, so they’re concerned primarily with company metrics. If you’re sitting in Jakarta traffic, you’re acutely aware of the challenges a ride-hailing company there faces; a foreign billionaire like Masayoshi Son just sees a thriving population with thousands of young, mobile-phone users.Super-apps are another example. The region’s hottest unicorns like to pitch these all-in-one platforms to venture-capital investors. To improve operational efficiency, they argue, more cash is needed to expand regionally. But that business model relies on the assumption that the social-media habits of a 22-year-old Vietnamese wouldn’t be too different from an Indonesian’s. This might not fly with a local investor, who's more adept at discerning cultural differences.Deeper local knowledge can also help avoid expensive mistakes. In October, Indian startup Oyo Hotels and Homes raised $1.5 billion from SoftBank Group Corp., among other investors, as it looked to expand into foreign markets. Yet Chinese fund managers largely stayed away — and for good reason. This week, Reuters reported that Oyo is unlikely to hit profitability in India and China until 2022. Similar reports had circulated in local Chinese media months ago, pointing out that the company had no traction on the mainland, even though it boasted of being the largest single hotel brand there. SoftBank’s Son may now have a tough time convincing investors in Hong Kong that Oyo is worth more than $10 billion, the valuation at its latest funding round.In truth, Alibaba may not be the best test case to determine if Asia’s pool of money will slosh toward young companies. Within two business days, institutional investors can swap their Hong Kong-listed shares for stocks in New York, should they feel liquidity in the Asian city is thin. That option to flee to a U.S. haven may have brought hesitant investors on board in the first place. As Asia’s unicorns grow bigger, many are looking at dual listings to ensure there’s enough demand to absorb their sizable offerings. Indonesia’s e-commerce platform Tokopedia PT, for instance, is considering a listing on multiple bourses as it seeks a pre-IPO funding round. This, to me, is a sign that Asia isn’t ready to be self-sufficient just yet. Saudi Arabia may be able to jam Aramco down local investors’ throats; but Asia’s startups are still stuck with a New York investor base that has a diminishing appetite for them. (1) This figure excludes Japan.To contact the author of this story: Shuli Ren at sren38@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Rachel Rosenthal at rrosenthal21@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets. She previously wrote on markets for Barron's, following a career as an investment banker, and is a CFA charterholder.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Reuters
HSBC swaps paper records for blockchain to track $20 bln worth of assets
HSBC aims to shift $20 billion worth of assets to a new blockchain-based custody platform by March, in one of the biggest deployments yet of the widely-hyped but still unproven technology by a global bank. The platform, known as Digital Vault, will give investors real-time access to records of securities bought on private markets, HSBC told Reuters, and seeks to capitalise on booming interest in such investments by yield-hungry investors. Banks and other financial firms have invested billions of dollars into finding uses for blockchain, a digital ledger that can be instantly and transparently updated.
- Reuters
HSBC swaps paper records for blockchain to track $20 billion worth of assets
HSBC aims to shift $20 billion worth of assets to a new blockchain-based custody platform by March, in one of the biggest deployments yet of the widely-hyped but still unproven technology by a global bank. The platform, known as Digital Vault, will give investors real-time access to records of securities bought on private markets, HSBC told Reuters, and seeks to capitalize on booming interest in such investments by yield-hungry investors. Banks and other financial firms have invested billions of dollars into finding uses for blockchain, a digital ledger that can be instantly and transparently updated.
- Reuters - UK Focus
REFILE-HSBC swaps paper records for blockchain to track $20 bln worth of assets
HSBC aims to shift $20 billion worth of assets to a new blockchain-based custody platform by March, in one of the biggest deployments yet of the widely-hyped but still unproven technology by a global bank. The platform, known as Digital Vault, will give investors real-time access to records of securities bought on private markets, HSBC told Reuters, and seeks to capitalise on booming interest in such investments by yield-hungry investors. Banks and other financial firms have invested billions of dollars into finding uses for blockchain, a digital ledger that can be instantly and transparently updated.
- Reuters - UK Focus
Britain's RBS launches digital bank Bó to take on start-ups
Royal Bank of Scotland has launched its standalone digital bank Bó in a plan to fend off competition from fast-growing online start-ups including Monzo and Starling. Bó Chief Executive Mark Bailie told reporters on Wednesday the venture could offer its parent cheaper funding by amassing customer deposits on its lower cost banking platform, although he did not say how much the bank had spent on the project. RBS, still majority state owned after a bailout in the 2008 financial crisis, has opted to launch a spin-out service, wagering that some consumers are tired of established brands.
- Fool.co.uk
Forget the Lloyds bank share price! I’d invest in this FTSE 100 banking giant instead
There are better banking performers in the FTSE 100 universe than Lloyds, I believe.
- Reuters - UK Focus
UPDATE 2-FTSE scales 4-month high as Trump brightens trade view
London's FTSE 100 hit a near four-month high on Wednesday as recent risk-on sentiment was bolstered after U.S. President Donald Trump said Washington and Beijing were close to a "phase one" trade deal, while an impressive forecast lifted BAT shares. The FTSE 250 index of midcap companies also rose 0.4%, closing at its highest since July, 2018, as hopes of an end to the Brexit saga through an election attracted traders to the domestic stocks.
- Reuters
HSBC private banking sees double-digit asset, revenue growth on Asia boost
The private banking business of HSBC Holdings PLC is aggressively pursuing double-digit growth in client assets and revenue, riffing off a surge in Asian wealth, the unit's chief executive told Reuters. Antonio Simoes also said the London-headquartered bank aims to increase its onshore presence in China, home to an eighth of all billionaires' wealth worldwide and where it is one of the few global banks to operate a private banking business. "The strategy to achieve double-digit asset and revenue growth is working," said Simoes, who assumed his role in January.
- Reuters
Bridgepoint taps HSBC to prepare sale of agrochemical firm Rovensa - sources
LONDON/FRANKFURT/MADRID (Reuters) - Bridgepoint has been sounding out possible bidders for its Portuguese agrochemical company Rovensa ahead of an auction process early next year that could raise about 800 million euros (£687.26 million), five sources told Reuters. The European private equity fund has hired HSBC to handle the so-called pre-marketing talks for the Lisbon-based crop protection company which was previously known as Sapec Agro, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Several private equity investors have already come forward for the business which also provides fertilizers such as micronutrients and biostimulants, the sources said.
- Reuters - UK Focus
Bridgepoint taps HSBC to prepare sale of agrochemical firm Rovensa -sources
LONDON/FRANKFURT/MADRID, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Bridgepoint has been sounding out possible bidders for its Portuguese agrochemical company Rovensa ahead of an auction process early next year that could raise about 800 million euros ($882 million), five sources told Reuters. The European private equity fund has hired HSBC to handle the so-called pre-marketing talks for the Lisbon-based crop protection company which was previously known as Sapec Agro, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Several private equity investors have already come forward for the business which also provides fertilizers such as micronutrients and biostimulants, the sources said.
- Reuters - UK Focus
UPDATE 2-Recharged trade hopes boost FTSE, mid-caps hit 15-month high
Britain's FTSE 100 rose on Monday on renewed hopes an initial Sino-U.S. trade deal may be clinched this year while further signs the Conservatives are set to win an election next month drove mid-caps to their highest since September 2018. The main index climbed 1%, boosted by miners and Asia-focused financial stocks HSBC and Prudential after the U.S. national security adviser said a preliminary trade deal was possible this year. The index, which jumped more than 1% in the previous session, was also supported by a 3% gain in Burberry after rival LVMH agreed to buy U.S. jeweller Tiffany for $16.2 billion.
