The bank has picked a Lebanese-born finance chief for the post of chief executive officer. He will take over in September as Director Noel Quinn retires after aggressive five years running the bank.

Georges Elhedery joined HSBC in 2005, holding a series of critical roles, which included co-CEO, Global Banking, and head of Operations in the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey. Prior to joining HSBC, he had worked at Goldman Sachs. His career began in 1997 at Banque Paribas, Tokyo.

However, the appointment of Elhedery is in line with HSBC’s tradition of elevating insiders to the top job. He had been chosen after a rigorous process that included internal and external candidates. The Chairman of HSBC, Mark Tucker, said that Elhedery had proved his metal in driving growth, simplifying operations, and managing costs.

It is pertinent that most of the profit for HSBC comes from Asia; therefore, an HSBC CEO like Elhedery with his fluency in Mandarin and experience abroad becomes important. With the bank gets ready for a brewing battle between the US and China, the prospects of Donald Trump coming back to power can’t be ruled out.

The outgoing chief executive, Noel Quinn, will run HSBC for another couple of weeks before standing down, but he will hang around to help Elhedery through the transition period. During his term, Quinn has steered the bank through the pandemic and massive cost-cutting programs, including shedding 35,000 jobs to save money, while also fending off the largest shareholder, Ping An’s demand to split HSBC’s Asian business.

On the remuneration front, he will draw an annual salary of £1.38 million, with allowances and bonuses on top of that. He could ultimately take home much more than that based on performance.

Elhedery is excited to lead HSBC’s powerful talent pool in delivering robust, sustainable growth and creating exceptional value for clients and investors.

Elhedery will take up the new role just ahead of HSBC’s second quarter results. Weaker growth in China, a new cycle of interest rate cuts in central banks, and also restructuring charges are some of the headwinds looking to test the bank. Higher investment banking revenues could counter these problems.

HSBC slightly lowered its pre-tax profit to $12.7 billion for the first quarter of 2024, which was ahead of analysts’ expectations. The revenues climbed up 3% to $20.8 billion to enable the bank to return more cash to investors.

Noel Quinn’s time will officially come to an end next year, and he will be available at all times before that to help Elhedery. Many were the changes that Quinn made while in HSBC, especially selling fringe parts of the business in Canada and France to sharpen fully on the more profitable areas.

Under the new CEO, Georges Elhedery, HSBC is well-positioned to sail through the complexities of the global market and continue its growth trajectory amidst probable geopolitical tensions.