Expense Account, Mint
The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. Ltd (HSBC) has been in the news in the past week for all the wrong reasons. Globally, the bank has been under pressure not just for mis-selling in the UK but also for allegedly violating the US anti-money laundering laws. Its third quarter results have a provisioning of another $800 million to account for the over $1.5 billion hit the bank may take for the alleged money laundering. The bank has already provisioned another $353 million, taking the total in penalties and compensation to about $1.8 billion on account of mis-selling the payment protection insurance (PPI) in the UK. The mis-selling issue has now chased the bank to India and recent newspaper reports say that the bank has been instructed by the London headquarters to stop selling mutual funds (MFs) and insurance products till it revamps its sales practices. The story said that a “culture audit” found instances of mis-selling. The bank denied the report to say that the revamp of wealth management was work-in-progress and no sales have been suspended.