In a brief statement to the stock exchanges in Hong Kong and in London this morning, the bank did not reveal who it was talking to, why it was selling these operations, or how much it expected make if it is successful in selling them.
“HSBC will make a further announcement if or when appropriate,” it said.
The cutbacks are the latest to be announced by HSBC since chief executive Stuart Gulliver revealed plans last April to eliminate some 30,000 jobs globally by the end of 2013, as part of an effort to improve efficiency. It eliminated almost 7,000 jobs last year, in such markets as Hong Kong, the US, Brazil, Canada and Mexico, and last month said it will reduce its UK workforce by 2,217 by the end of next year.
The announcement of plans to sell the South American operations comes less than three months after Gulliver was quoted in media reports as saying HSBC expected to see continued strong growth in Latin America, although at a more moderate pace than in 2011. A photograph of a container ship from China at a Brazilian port appears on the cover of the bank’s 2011 annual report, illustrating, group chairman Douglas Flint observed in an introduction, HSBC’s "shift in emphasis" towards "faster-growing markets".
He noted that HSBC entered Brazil — which is not among the countries it is getting out of — in 1997, "and since then has built its operations to generate pre-tax profits of $1.2bn in 2011, an increase of 19% over the prior year".
Of the four countries it is leaving, Uruguay is perhaps the most surprising, as it is one of South America’s most economically-developed, and is often used by multi-national companies as a base for marketing into other parts of South America, causing some to refer to it as "the Switzerland of South America".
Last year was a good one for HSBC, especially relative to most of its rivals, with a 15% rise in pre-tax profit to $21.9bn (£13.8m), according to its annual report, released in February.
