A brief scuffle on the bridge of the HSBC supertanker doesn’t mean a change of course

‘HSBC shareholders should remember that slavish adherence to corporate fashion is usually what gets banks into trouble,’ I wrote in May, in response to whispers that executive chairman
Stephen Green was under pressure to make way for a conventionally non-executive outsider.

‘HSBC shareholders should remember that slavish adherence to corporate fashion is usually what gets banks into trouble,’ I wrote in May, in response to whispers that executive chairman
Stephen Green was under pressure to make way for a conventionally non-executive outsider. The bank’s board certainly seems to have taken my message to heart, having persuaded its major
institutional investors to accept a reshuffle that offends against every nostrum of corporate correctness — which proves that having $2.4 trillion of assets and no bailout money means never
having to say you’re sorry.

The haste with which HSBC announced the appointments of Doug Flint as Green’s successor and Stuart Gulliver as chief executive added fuel to media talk of a boardroom bust-up. But my sources
tell me much nonsense has been written about this story. Green was in sight of retirement long before he accepted the invitation to become a trade minister at the end of the year, so the search for
a new chairman was already well under way; and since senior non-exec Sir Simon Robertson was in charge of the search he could not himself have been a candidate, though he was widely
‘tipped’. Likewise, some talkative shareholders may have liked the idea of the thrusting former Goldman Sachs partner John Thornton as chairman: Thornton seems to have liked the idea
too, but influential board members evidently did not — and were always likely to stick to the tradition of appointing one of HSBC’s own to the top job.

But Mike Geoghegan — the chief executive who is resigning with a huge pay-off — had ceased to be the favoured son some time ago, as seemed to be confirmed by his office move from London
to Hong Kong last year.