The big one
HSBC Holdings is one
of the largest financial services firms in the world. Headquartered
in London, the global banking group has more than 256,000 employees
throughout Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa, and the
Middle East. HSBC was established as the international and
uniform brand name in order to better promote the banking group as
a whole in 1999. However, with a truly international presence and
established local presence in so many countries, HSBC took its
internationalism a step further in 2002 by marketing itself as "the
world's local bank," an approach that's still taken by the firm. In
addition to being known throughout the world for its size, HSBC has
also earned a reputation for being a well-run organisation. While
many other large banking groups struggled in the midst of the
worldwide financial crisis that began in 2007, HSBC remained
relatively (though not completely) unscathed.
A storied history
HSBC's origins stretch back to the mid-19th Century, when Thomas
Sutherland, the Hong Kong Superintendent of the Peninsular and the
Oriental Steam Navigation Company identified a need for local
banking branches both in Hong Kong and along the Chinese coast. The
Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited was founded in
1865, and opened offices in both Shanghai and London. And, over the
coming decades and then century, the bank opened branches
throughout China, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent, also
further expanding in Europe and North America.
Almost a century into its existence, in 1959 the Hong Kong and
Shanghai Banking Corporation acquired the British Bank of the
Middle East, which was originally known as the Imperial Bank of
Persia and had a number of operations in the Gulf Arab states, as
well as the Mercantile Bank, which had banking operations in India
and South East Asia. In 1965, six years after purchasing the two
banks, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation bought a
controlling interest in the Hang Seng Bank, which had already been
based in Hong Kong since 1933.
Through the rest of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the now banking
giant continued its proven-successful strategy of moving into new
markets. In 1981, it established the Hong Kong Bank of Canada, and
in 1986, established the Hong Kong Bank of Australia. The following
year in the USA, in 1987, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank holdings
acquired the New York-based Marine Midland bank, further
strengthening the massive group's US operations. By this point the
group had a global constellation of operations which really needed
to sit unified under one umbrella. In 1991, the international
'constellation' of banks and companies owned by Hong Kong and
Shanghai Bank were brought together under the single ownership and
control of the newly created umbrella banking holding company HSBC
Holdings, under which business and operations have remained
since.