Today was Stuart Gulliver’s last day at HSBC after 22 years, the last seven of which were as chief executive.
The bank has had a rocky time, not least being fined £1.9 billion for Mexican cocaine gang money laundering.
But today seemed like the right time to give him a good send off, to say, more or less, the boy done well.
Sadly, the results weren’t that great and most of the City response was downbeat, at least. The shares fell.
HSBC seemed taken aback. I think it could have made a better effort of telling us about Gulliver’s legacy, making it easier to ignore the short-term City noise.
The results presentation to analysts did have one slide about his achievements, but it was buried and very jargon heavy.
I think on occasions like this there’s merit in an entirely separate, non RNS release just reminding us, in simple language, what the retiring banker had done over his time in charge. It didn’t need to be exaggerated. The straight truth would have done.
