I don't know. I see the nice HSBC building in my city and all I can think of is that half of the business of theirs is crooked, money laundry, trafficking, drug cartels. No shiny building can change what you actually do.
That's not the whole story though. HSBC was literally founded so that the brits could bank the cash they were making by smuggling opium into China illegally. They're still net positive from banking drug money.
I'm surprised that you'd bring up BCCI in this instance, an institution absolutely steeped in intelligence spookery. Refer to The Outlaw Bank by Jonathan Beaty.
HSBC was founded to finance the Opium wars in China in the 19th century. Let's be adults here, the world's biggest banks aren't letting drug trade profits, the world's most lucrative trade, simply fall to small fries. They own it.
HSBC exists because of Opium. It has always been the bank of the drug cartels.
> HSBC was founded after the second of the Opium Wars, by which time the trade was already well established. The founders included several opium traders who recognised the profitable banking opportunities presented by the new market.
People still use the international financial system and the banking system in particular even though they have done and still do business with very dodgy people. Afaik HSBC is still alive and kicking even though it has helped some Mexican cartels launder their money, we’re talking about monsters who like to skin their victims alive.
Well, the point I take away from Taibbi is that a big bank like HSBC can do things that are (a) criminal and (b) bad for us (US, developed world economy) and they won't be forced to change their ways, even after they are caught, repeatedly. I don't see anything in what you say that disagrees with that. What you say just amounts to "it is their business model." So they have a business model that encourages, or possibly requires, criminal behavior, and this appears to be effectively OK with regulators...
Regarding your point about "giving a great deal of independence to country offices." Why do these country offices need to belong to HSBC? Why do people bank with offices of HSBC rather than local banks? I'm fairly sure that these local offices provide essential connections to the larger financial network -- for example to move funds from African countries to the Gulf countries. But regulators do not, for example, require HSBC to divest itself of any of these country offices which abuse their independence -- which seems like a rather mild sanction under the circumstances, and likely to greatly mitigate the issues.
Lol no. HSBC has always had a much worse reputation than RBC, or any other bank for that matter. HSBC and Standard Chartered are amongst the worst international offenders when it comes to fraud and money laundering.
I don't know much about HSBC's history with dirty money, but they are well known to be one of the most global banks. Only Citibank and Standard Chartered operate in more countries.
Looking at San Francisco, HSBC only has a handful of retail locations, seems like they were focusing on the Chinese-American market. (They also have a building on Montgomery Bank Row, assume they're keeping that for their tooty customers.)
Not sure if this the soapbox you really want to stand on.
Not disagreeing (First Direct has a far better reputation) but it's really a brand of HSBC. The irony of having to move to a bank suspected of funding [1] actual drug dealing/laundering/terrorism so my accounts won't get frozen over imaginary drugs/laundering/terrorism is somewhat amusing.
It hs a lot to do with Mexican drug money laundering in this case, considering it is part of the same indictment, and HSBC is only a UK company in a very loose sense, much of it is in the US and it considers Hong-Kong to be as much of it's base as London, as well it might, given it is a London holding company established by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, hence the initials.
For HSBC I doubt it. But I rmember seeing a map of all the branches the defunct BCCI bank had, and they had something like 10x more branches in Colombia than in the US (this was a Pakistani Bank). They went under a few years later.
> HSBC was the bank of money laundering of the mexican drug cartels.
HSBC was created in hong kong by the british to launder opium money after the Opium Wars.
""The Hongkong and Shanghai Bank" was founded by Scotsman Sir Thomas Sutherland in the then British colony of Hong Kong on 3 March 1865, and in Shanghai a month later, benefiting from the start of trading into China, including opium trading"
HSBC started as the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and its founders were intimately involved in the opium trade. This article seems reasonably neutral and historically accurate: https://mondediplo.com/2010/02/04hsbc.
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