HSBC is advising Rosbank on its retail strategy and AT Kearney, which seems an unlikely choice, is advising HSBC on its investment banking model. The project reports to Mark Ramsey, acting head of global equities. Like every bank, HSBC has to figure out how to cover the high costs of research by means of paltry broking commissions, especially since research working with corporate finance is now a no-no. The answer is simply to cut the crap.

Analysts spend vast amounts of time poring over the detail of balance sheets, most of them irrelevant when it comes to picking stocks. What they need to do instead is focus on five or six pieces of key information and get a feel for management and strategy. That way they could cover many more stocks than they do and banks could cut their research budgets in half.

But consultancy is not always the quickest way to the obvious. Whether AT Kearney has the guts to tell HSBC this plain fact remains to be seen.

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