HSBC Holdings plc

Thomas Sutherland was the Hong Kong superintendent of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company in 1864 when he identified that the colony's merchants — trading silk, tea, cotton, and opium between China, India, and Europe — had no adequate local bank. Existing banks were based in India or England, too slow and too expensive for the daily demands of Hong Kong's trading houses. He raised HK$5 million in initial capital and on March 3, 1865, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation opened at 1 Queen's Road in Hong Kong. A branch in Shanghai followed one month later. By 1875, HSBC had offices in seven countries across Asia, Europe, and North America.

HSBC quickly became the financial infrastructure of British Asia. It printed the first banknotes in Thailand. It financed China's first public international loan in 1874. By 1900, under Chief Manager Thomas Jackson, the bank operated in 16 countries and financed trade in tea from China, cotton from India, sugar from the Philippines, and rice from Vietnam. HSBC's ability to move money across the British Empire's territories — using its own exchange rates and its own correspondent network — gave it advantages that no other bank in the region could match.

In preparation for Hong Kong's 1997 handover to China, HSBC formed HSBC Holdings plc in London in 1991 — creating a UK-domiciled holding company with primary listings in London and Hong Kong. The following year, HSBC acquired Midland Bank — one of Britain's largest clearing banks — in a deal valued at approximately $7.2 billion, doubling HSBC's assets and giving it a major retail banking presence in the United Kingdom. The acquisition required HSBC to relocate its headquarters from Hong Kong to London. At the time, it was one of the largest banking acquisitions in history.

HSBC's most damaging acquisition was Household International — an American consumer finance company with significant subprime mortgage exposure — bought for $15.5 billion in 2003. When the US housing market collapsed in 2007-2008, HSBC's Household portfolio generated billions in losses. HSBC was forced to write down the acquisition heavily and eventually wound down Household's operations entirely. The episode cost billions and consumed management attention for years, making the bank more cautious about further US retail banking ambitions. HSBC was one of the first major banks to publicly disclose subprime losses, which paradoxically enhanced its credibility during the financial crisis.

HSBC held approximately $3.098 trillion in assets as of September 2024, making it the largest bank in Europe and the seventh-largest globally. The bank served approximately 39 million customers in 57 countries, with market capitalisation exceeding $220 billion. In 2024, HSBC sold its Canadian banking operations to Royal Bank of Canada for C$13.5 billion — part of a continuing strategic focus on its core Asian markets and international trade corridors. The bank where Thomas Sutherland had raised HK$5 million from Hong Kong merchants in 1865 was now one of the most systemically important financial institutions on Earth.