Household HSBC Watch

Two months after rebranding its Colombian unit, the U.K.- based HSBC Holdings (HBC) is enduring its first strike led by workers seeking higher wages. The bank’s 750 workers in Colombia walked out Monday evening to demand an 8.5% pay raise this year, while the bank offers only inflation-rate increases, Fabio Arias, deputy president of the United Confederation of Workers, the country’s main union, told Dow Jones Newswires.

The bank’s management hasn’t provided a specific rate of increase it is willing to offer, although the current inflation rate is around 5%. HSBC also refused to make a commitment not to cut severance payments granted to fired workers, said Segundo Mora, the general secretary of the country’s union of banking workers. HSBC entered Colombia last year when it bought the largest Panamanian banking group Grupo Banistmo for $1.77 billion. Banistmo had operations in Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras.