HSBC Interim CEO Demands Action From Managers After Flint’s Exit

(Bloomberg) -- HSBC Holdings Plc's interim chief said he wants “less process and more action” in his first call with senior managers after John Flint was abruptly ousted from the top job.

“We need to be more granular in the execution plan to deliver,” Noel Quinn said on a call with managers earlier Tuesday, according to remarks recounted to Bloomberg News. “We need to be honest with ourselves on what is working, and what is not.” Quinn was head of HSBC's global commercial banking arm until the announcement of Flint's departure.

The focus should be on growth, Quinn said. Chief Financial Officer Ewen Stevenson also joined the call, saying the bank has to make good on its promises to investors.
Europe's largest lender removed Flint after just 18 months, citing the demands of an “increasingly complex” environment, and announced a new round of job cuts. During Flint's short tenure as chief executive officer, the 238,000-employee bank grappled with a declining stock price, a high-profile sexual harassment case at its investment bank and a failure to hit cost targets.

“I want to increase the pace of the execution and I want to do it in a more simplified fashion: less process, more action,” Quinn, who has worked at HSBC for 32 years -- a similar tenure to Flint's -- said during the call.

The interim CEO also said that it's tough to be both a domestic bank and an international bank in about 60 countries. The strategy in China and Hong Kong remains unchanged, he said.

A spokeswoman for HSBC declined to comment.

HSBC made close to 80% of its pretax profit from Asia in the first half of the year, and the bank has said that the performance of its U.S. and European operations is below what it expects. Speaking on Monday, Stevenson said the returns from Europe were “unacceptable,” while in the U.S., the bank said it would miss the return target it had set for next year.

HSBC announced a $1 billion stock buyback on Monday, and second-quarter pretax profit of $6.2 billion that exceeded analysts' estimates. But the financial results were overshadowed by Flint's surprise exit.

“Yesterday was a difficult day for a lot of us, and it was a particularly difficult day for John,” Quinn said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Stefania Spezzati in London at sspezzati@bloomberg.net;Harry Wilson in London at hwilson57@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ambereen Choudhury at achoudhury@bloomberg.net, Keith Campbell, Marion Dakers

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