Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd. is the namesake bank within HSBC Holdings, headquartered in the United Kingdom. Along with owning the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Ltd., HSBC also owns France's CCF, and 62% of Hong Kong's Hang Seng Bank. HSBC has more than 7,000 offices in about 80 countries, providing consumer and business banking services, asset management, investment banking, securities trading, insurance, and leasing. US operations include HSBC USA and joint venture Wells Fargo HSBC Trade Bank, Republic Bank of New York, and consumer lender Household International.
HSBC does business in 64 languages, conducts member transactions in some 40 currencies and tends toward allowing autonomous management of its banks, and financial services subsidiaries (About HSBC Online). HSBC does business in Central, North and South America, though Asia traditionally accounts for about one-half of the firm's revenue. Such wide-ranging reach also exposes HSBC to more localized misfortunes, such as Argentina's 2001 peso devaluation which cost it half a billion dollars in currency conversion losses alone. Total charges pertaining to Argentina equaled more than $1 billion that year. HSBC has also announced plans to buy Mexico's Grupo Financiero Bital. The move will position HSBC to conduct NAFTA-related business with greater ease (About HSBC Online).
Part of the growth success of HSBC has been its willingness to become a ôwiredö bank, and a great deal of its success is attributed to its electronic banking services (Hoovers Online). The reason that one of AsiaÆs primary banking facilities is headquartered in England is that the Hongkong & Shanghai Bank was started in 1865 by Thomas Sutherland, a Scot, and some two dozen other European businessmen to finance and promote British trade in opium, silk and tea in East Asian. In 1867, a London branch was open, and, as will be shown below, unsettled affairs in China dr...