By Margot Patrick and Simon Clark 

HSBC Holdings PLC is in the final stages of selecting its next chief executive officer, people familiar with the matter said Friday, in a race that has narrowed to interim CEO Noel Quinn and UniCredit SpA boss Jean Pierre Mustier.

The board hasn't made a final decision and regulatory approval would still need to be sought, one of the people said.

HSBC's board started looking for a new CEO last fall, after ousting former head John Flint and installing Mr. Quinn. HSBC Chairman Mark Tucker, who is leading the search, said earlier this week that the search process has been "very thorough and rigorous," and that the board intends to stick to a six-to-12-month time frame it set in August to fill the role.

If Mr. Mustier takes the job, it would mark the first hiring of an outsider for the job since HSBC was founded in Hong Kong in 1865. Mr. Tucker, who started in 2017, was the bank's first externally selected chairman. Mr. Quinn is the bank's former head of commercial banking and has been at HSBC since 1987.

The potential shake-up comes days after Mr. Quinn laid out sweeping plans for HSBC to scale back in Europe, the U.S. and in investment banking. Since he started as interim CEO, the bank has put its large French retail business on the block, and is now aiming to reduce its head count by around 35,000 from its current 235,000 staff.

Mr. Tucker has previously said the board gave Mr. Quinn full authority to make strategic changes and address areas of weakness. In August, he said Mr. Quinn would bring "pace, decisiveness and ambition."

Mr. Quinn, 58, has said he aims to make the job permanent, even though he hadn't ever expected to be in the role after not making the shortlist in earlier CEO successions.

Mr. Mustier, 59, has been CEO of UniCredit -- Italy's largest bank by assets -- since July 2016, in a career that took him back and forth between that bank and spanned other employers including Société Générale SA. Most of his experience is in corporate and investment banking, a recent weak spot for HSBC. He has also lived and worked in Asia, HSBC's main source of profits.

Under his tenure, UniCredit's stock is up by around 50%, one of the best performances by a European bank in the period. In a three-year strategic plan, Mr. Mustier sold an array of assets including asset manager Pioneer and online bank FinecoBank, to bolster capital and narrow its activities. In December, he started a new, four-year plan to shed around 8,000 jobs and close branches to cut costs and counteract the effects of low interest rates.

Mr. Mustier has been linked before to other bank CEO jobs, including at Deutsche Bank AG.

The Italian bank's shares fell 4% Friday, following an initial report by Bloomberg on Thursday of his potential hiring. HSBC's shares closed up 0.45%, in a broadly lower market.

Write to Margot Patrick at margot.patrick@wsj.com and Simon Clark at simon.clark@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 21, 2020 13:49 ET (18:49 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Unicredit (BIT:UCG)
Gráfica de Acción Histórica
De Feb 2024 a Mar 2024 Haga Click aquí para más Gráficas Unicredit.
Unicredit (BIT:UCG)
Gráfica de Acción Histórica
De Mar 2023 a Mar 2024 Haga Click aquí para más Gráficas Unicredit.