The firm said late on Tuesday night that Quinn, who has been with HSBC since 1987, will become group CEO immediately. Quinn had been the interim chief executive since August 2019, when he succeeded John Flint, who left the firm abruptly after a brief stint of about a year and a half as its CEO.
Quinn takes charge of Asia-focused HSBC at a difficult time for markets globally, as banks try to navigate the growing impact of Covid-19. The fall-out has been so severe that banks and rating agencies are forecasting a global recession this year.
S&P Global Ratings’ economists are predicting at least two quarters of “well below-trend” growth that will be sufficient to trigger rising unemployment, and potentially a global recession. They estimate global GDP growth to be just 1% to 1.5% in 2020, while growth in Asia Pacific will more than halve to less than 3% this year.
Quinn’s appointment also comes about a month after he announced a sweeping overhaul of the bank as part of a restructuring that will involve 35,000 job cuts. The bank’s global banking and markets (GBM) arm was in the limelight, as it will bear the brunt of a group-wide cut of $100bn in risk-weighted assets by the end of 2022, as GlobalCapital reported in February.
While GBM will go from holding 31% of the bank’s global RWAs in 2019 to less than a quarter by 2022, in Asia, RWAs will rise from 42% to about half over the same period.
In a statement announcing Quinn’s appointment, group chairman Mark Tucker said that Quinn had proved to be the “outstanding candidate” to take on the job permanently.
“In the last few months [Quinn] has worked closely with the board to agree the key actions required to build and enhance performance on a sustainable basis,” added Tucker.
“Quinn has really stepped up to the plate and it hasn’t been easy for him in recent months, given the constant questions surfacing as to whether he is suitable for the seat,” said John Cronin, analyst at Goodbody. “Go for it he will.”
Cronin added: “The key challenge he will undoubtedly face is less on the coronavirus front and is more on the revenue growth front, the detail of which we are keen to learn. If he fails to deliver in this vein, Ewen Stevenson, CFO, is sufficiently distanced from that revenue growth strategy to unseat him.”