HSBC To Name AIA CEO Mark Tucker as Chairman, Sources Say -- Update

By Margot Patrick 

LONDON -- HSBC Holdings PLC is set to name AIA Group Ltd. Chief Executive Mark Tucker as its next chairman, the first time the bank has hired from outside for the role in its 151 year history.

Mr. Tucker will join the bank in the fall, people familiar with the matter said Sunday, replacing outgoing HSBC veteran Douglas Flint. Mr. Tucker, currently based in Hong Kong, will relocate to London.

Mr. Flint's planned departure is the first step in refreshing the bank's leadership and setting out its next set of goals. HSBC Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver, who has said he would leave once Mr. Flint's successor is in place, is to announce he will leave the bank in 2018, a person familiar with the matter said Sunday.

That announcement, and Mr. Tucker's joining, is expected to come after AIA confirms Mr. Tucker's departure in an announcement early Monday in Hong Kong.

Mr. Tucker has been at AIA since 2010. He joined the insurer as its former owner, American International Group Inc., readied it for an initial public offering in Hong Kong. Before AIA, Mr. Tucker was chief executive of Prudential PLC, building its Asian franchise in the 1990s, and has been a nonexecutive director at the Bank of England.

Along with resigning from AIA, Mr. Tucker will also step down from the board of Goldman Sachs Inc., the people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Flint, alongside Mr. Gulliver, helped HSBC reshape itself and adapt to harsher regulation and lower profitability for banks after the financial crisis. Their five-year strategy plan in 2011 saw the bank rein in its sprawling global operations, closing dozens of business and exiting much of Latin America.

After HSBC paid $1.9 billion in a 2012 settlement over money laundering lapses, Mr. Flint and Mr. Gulliver oversaw a costly effort to raise financial crime fighting standards at the bank, which is still subject to a deferred prosecution agreement that was part of the settlement.

The two men were seen by analysts and investors as a formidable duo, with Mr. Flint becoming a top voice in bank regulation circles, and Mr. Gulliver credited with managing the bank's risks with the eye of the trader he once was. But some investors had urged the bank not to let Mr. Flint and Mr. Gulliver linger too long, and last year they clarified their plans to leave.

Mr. Flint became chairman in December 2010 and has been on HSBC's board since 1995, the year he joined the bank as finance director. Mr. Gulliver, at the bank since 1980, became CEO at the start of 2011.

Since starting in Hong Kong in 1865, HSBC has always selected insiders as chairman, even when it meant falling afoul of U.K. corporate governance recommendations. It had said that this time around it would bring in an outsider.

Write to Margot Patrick at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 12, 2017 15:10 ET (19:10 GMT)

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