Feb 21, 2017
HSBC profit falls on writedowns and one-off costs
Shares in HSBC fell more than 6 per cent on Tuesday after one-off costs and multibillion-dollar writedowns dragged down the lender's 2016 profit 62 per cent year-on-year to $7.1bn. The British bank blamed slowing economic growth in its main markets of Hong Kong and the UK for the profit slide, as well as a $3.2bn impairment of goodwill to its private banking unit in Europe, and the impact of the sale of its operations in Brazil. On an adjusted basis, pre-tax profit dropped 1 per cent year-on-year to $19.3bn. HSBC's London-listed shares, having climbed steadily since the UK voted to leave the EU last June, fell as much as 6.3 per cent to £6.68 in early trading on Tuesday. HSBC may redeploy only $80bn-$90bn of the assets it has cut, mainly from its investment bank, instead of up to $150bn it originally planned. Mr Gulliver said the bank was now looking for acquisition opportunities in asset management, having spent the past 10 years purely focused on disposing of some 96 businesses. The bank expanded its cost-cutting target from $4.5bn-$5bn to $6bn and said this would add an extra $2bn in restructuring costs, taking the total cost to $6bn..
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