HSBC Holding plc's U.S. credit card business, which is broadly 50% prime and 50% nonprime, "continues to remain profitable, and we are now running our cards business
worldwide, as one global business, with HSBC Finance leading the consolidation," Group Chief Executive Michael Geoghegan told shareholders at the London-based bank's annual meeting Friday.
"We are now a top-five global card business," he added.
Geoghegan said this "has been a hard year." Since the beginning of America's housing market downturn, HSBC Finance's contribution to the group has been broadly break-even, he said, but the company holds an appropriate level of loan loss provisions.
He asked shareholders to "rest assured that management and the board have looked at every option available to recapture value," and they concluded that "the best approach is to work out the troubled part of this portfolio of assets."
Group Chairman Stephen Green said that although problems in the U.S. persist, "there are clear opportunities that play to our strengths, especially with Hispanic customers and with internationally oriented businesses," areas in which HSBC "will be investing accordingly in the years ahead."
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