“Business is about the successful exploitation of risk, not the avoidance of risk,” Douglas Flint, group finance director of UK-headquartered bank HSBC, told The Banker in an interview a few months ago.
The problem for large global banks such as HSBC is shown by the market reaction to its exposure to the troubled US sub-prime mortgage market: acres of negative press coverage amid a share price fall. Investors of the highly rated behemoths, such as HSBC and Citi, are not looking for high risk when they buy their shares.
