Insight - What is the future for HSBC?

Deep roots: An HSBC bank branch is pictured in London, Political pressures are bound to intensify in the aftermath of the pandemic for the bank, as government bailouts of companies and households will embolden politicians to demand even more of their banks. ─ AFP

HSBC Holdings Plc, a London- and Hong Kong-listed banking behemoth with US$3 trillion in assets, is among the handful of truly global lenders. But its future as an international firm – a lynchpin of decades of trade between East and West – is increasingly dictated by politics, not the laws of free-market economics.

An eventual breakup of the company along regional lines shouldn’t take investors by surprise.