By Joe Wallace, Margot Patrick and Ben Dummett
LONDON -- A year into its search for a new chairman, HSBC is still looking.
Europe's biggest bank by assets tapped headhunters in late 2024 to find a replacement for Mark Tucker, who has since left to join Hong Kong insurer AIA. In a drawn-out recruitment process that has frustrated some candidates, HSBC's board has struggled to agree on a successor, people familiar with the search said.
The job atop the bank, which is based in London but makes a lot of its money in Asia, is one of the most demanding in world finance. High-level connections in Beijing, London and Washington, stamina for travel and the nerve to straddle geopolitical divides are a requirement. Candidates also need to understand international banking, endure rowdy shareholder meetings, and handle scrutiny from both the British press and China's state media.
The protracted hunt comes at a tricky time for HSBC. The bank is undergoing a shake-up under Chief Executive Georges Elhedery, who took over in the fall of 2024 and has set about cutting staff and slicing and dicing divisions. Tariffs on Asian customers, rising taxes in the U.K. and a burst of European financial mergers are among the demands on the bank's attention.
Contenders for the role include former U.K. finance chief George Osborne and Kevin Sneader, a onetime McKinsey managing partner who now works at Goldman Sachs, some of the people familiar with the search said. Veteran British banker Naguib Kheraj recently pulled out of the running.
Remaining candidates have been invited to give presentations to HSBC's board early this week, some of the people said.
A spokesman for HSBC said the search is ongoing and that the bank would give an update "in due course." MWM Consulting, the headhunter working on the search, declined to comment.
The unusual size of HSBC's nominations committee -- it contains all 11 independent nonexecutive directors -- is one obstacle to decision-making. The trouble also points to the small pool of candidates who are both suitable and available for a job so demanding they would probably have to drop other commitments to do it.
At roughly $2.2 million, Tucker's compensation isn't much of a draw for financiers who could earn more elsewhere with less hassle. Some other banks pay chairs more: UBS Chairman Colm Kelleher, for example, makes the equivalent of $6.9 million.
HSBC was founded by a Scottish businessman in 1865 to finance tea and silk trade through Hong Kong and Shanghai ports, and it later became Hong Kong's de facto central bank.
The lender retains bases in Britain and Hong Kong, plays a key role in cross-border trade and has a big business clearing dollar transactions. As a financial bridge between East and West, HSBC is more exposed to conflict, sanctions and the ups-and-downs of the West's relationship with China than many of its rivals.
"The chair needs to be very politically aware and connected," said Alex Potter, an analyst at British asset manager Aberdeen, a longtime HSBC shareholder. "They have to be as comfortable in the White House as they are in Beijing. That's a very difficult gap to bridge."
But the longer the search drags on, the less appealing the job appears, said former board members.
One possibility is for interim chair Brendan Nelson -- a former auditor of HSBC during a career at KPMG -- to get the post for a shortened term of a few years. That would buy the board time to wait for the right long-term choice.
Unlike in the U.S., chairmen of British companies are usually outsiders expected to bring a fresh perspective and the authority to stand up to executives.
At HSBC, Tucker pushed out a CEO, installed two more and turned over much of the board since becoming chairman in 2017. He traveled to the bank's outposts and events, and was known for sending personal emails to staff at all hours. When HSBC drew China's ire for cooperating with U.S. prosecutors in a case against Huawei Technologies, Tucker was able to draw on decades of experience in Asia.
"You want an ideal blend of deep knowledge of banking and both Eastern and Western ties," said RBC Capital Markets analyst Benjamin Toms. "It's not a deep field."
Political nous is the most important box to tick, Toms said, because CEO Elhedery -- previously the bank's chief financial officer -- is seen more as a numbers whiz.
That could favor Osborne, who ran the U.K. Treasury from 2010 until shortly after the Brexit referendum in 2016. He helped rewrite financial regulation after bank bailouts, and fostered a golden era of British relations with China. HSBC helped the U.K. court the superpower for investments and assisted China in opening its financial markets.
Since leaving government, Osborne has edited London's Evening Standard newspaper, advised a BlackRock investment institute and chaired the British Museum through a crisis related to missing antiquities.
In 2021, Osborne joined Robey Warshaw, a London-based advisory firm. While there, Osborne was on a team that counseled HSBC on how to respond to pressure from China's Ping An Insurance, its largest shareholder, according to people familiar with the matter.
Osborne also helped get the U.K. government on board when HSBC agreed over a weekend to buy the British subsidiary of Silicon Valley Bank in 2023, people involved in the deal said.
Sneader, a Scot born in Canada, joined Goldman as a senior executive in Asia in 2022 after more than three decades at McKinsey. Sneader took McKinsey into China in the 1990s and later oversaw its Asia operations. As managing partner, he spent much of his time trying to move the consulting firm beyond controversies including its work with opioid makers.
The efforts divided McKinsey's partners, who voted him out after one term.
Write to Joe Wallace at joe.wallace@wsj.com, Margot Patrick at margot.patrick@wsj.com and Ben Dummett at ben.dummett@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 01, 2025 20:00 ET (01:00 GMT)
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