HSBC Holdings, one of Britain’s biggest high street banks and Europe’s largest lender by market value, is preparing to kick off a hunt for its next chairman.
Sky News has learnt that HSBC’s board has appointed headhunters to orchestrate the recruitment of a successor to Mark Tucker, who has held the post since 2017.
City sources said this weekend that the search firm MWM Consulting was among the frontrunners to run the process.
Mr Tucker, a former boss of Prudential and Hong Kong-based insurer AIA, is expected to step down at around the time of HSBC’s annual meeting in the spring of 2026.
Executives said on Saturday, however, that he could leave earlier depending upon the pace of the process.
Whoever succeeds Mr Tucker could find themselves thrust into the heart of any new trade war ignited by Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.
As a financial behemoth with deep ties to both China and the US, HSBC is deeply exposed to escalating trade and diplomatic tensions between the two countries.
The search for HSBC’s next chairman is being coordinated at board level by Ann Godbehere, the bank’s senior independent non-executive director.
Sources said the complex nature of the HSBC chairmanship – one of the plum jobs in British business and global banking – meant that beginning preparations for a handover nearly 18 months from the arrival of a new chair made sense.
When he was appointed in 2017, Mr Tucker became the first outsider to take the post in the bank’s 152-year history – and which has a big presence on the high street thanks to its acquisition of the Midland Bank in 1992.
He oversaw a rapid change of leadership, appointing bank veteran John Flint to replace Stuart Gulliver as chief executive.
The transition did not work out positively, however, with Mr Tucker deciding to sack Mr Flint after just 18 months.
He was replaced on an interim basis by Noel Quinn in the summer of 2018, with that change becoming permanent in April 2020.
Mr Quinn spent a further four years in the post before deciding to step down, and in July he was succeeded by Georges Elhedery, a long-serving executive in HSBC’s markets unit and more recently the bank’s chief financial officer.
Mr Tucker appointed Noel Quinn as chief executive in 2018. File pic: AP
The new chief’s first big move in the top job was to unveil a sweeping reorganisation of HSBC that sees it reshaped into eastern markets and western markets businesses.
He also decided to merge its commercial and investment banking operations into a single division.
The restructuring, which Mr Elhedery said would “result in a simpler, more dynamic, and agile organisation” has nevertheless drawn a mixed reaction from analysts.
Sources said that HSBC’s board would consider both existing non-executive directors and outsiders to succeed Mr Tucker.
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Under the former Pru chief’s stewardship, HSBC has racked up the highest annual profits in the bank’s history, and sold a number of its international operations.
The largest of those was its Canadian unit, which it offloaded last year to Royal Bank of Canada for close to $10bn.
Mr Tucker also helped to steer HSBC through the COVID-19 pandemic, when its staff in Hong Kong and China were forced into some of the world’s most severe lockdowns.
In 2022, the Chinese insurer Ping An – and a significant shareholder in the bank – called on HSBC’s board to break the group up, which Mr Tucker and his colleagues resisted.
His most daring acquisition came early last year, when HSBC stepped in to rescue the British arm of Silicon Valley Bank as part of a Bank of England-coordinated deal over the course of a weekend.
HSBC’s London-listed shares closed on Friday at 732.7p, giving the bank a market capitalisation of almost £131bn.
The stock has risen by nearly a quarter over the last year.
HSBC has been contacted for comment.