HSBC received a firm offer for its French units according to Bloomberg. 400 branches only gave HSBC 20 percent of pre-tax profits so they are being sold for 2.1 billion euros, which is $3.2 billion (USD). Apparently the Household International deal has gone sour in the United States as well.

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For months we have heard of federal and local programs to help homeowners. Attemping to avoid ARM resets is the main emphasis. What happens to people with other onerous terms and conditions? What happens when they contact HSBC and receive no help? Thay become disloyal angry customers. The extent to which HSBC helps customers remains to be seen, although the HSBC name is sometimes associated with community level programs. HSBC is missing from national level assistance programs. One reason seems to be HSBC Finance and their high interest second mortgage loans and unsecured loans attached to the first mortgage. See one recent report in our complaint blog.

After Sarbanes-Oxley, which was adopted primarily because of the Enron debacle, many foreign entities complained and threated to stop doing business in the United States because of Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. (We have 16 articles in the Sarbanes-Oxley section of this blog.) Banks such as HSBC complained but found it difficult to leave the United States. Now that subprime put a dent in profits and put the hurt on SIV’s one must look at financial statements. If a bank took risks that were never mentioned what do we make of that?

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HSBC Holdings Plc’s rescue of its Asscher Finance Ltd. structured investment vehicle will mean 70 percent losses for bondholders including a Spanish unit of Credit Suisse Group. London-based HSBC is restructuring Asscher to prevent it from having to sell assets at fire sale prices to repay maturing debt. Asscher has $5.9 billion of debt outstanding, including $468 million of mezzanine notes. HSBC is the second-largest bank manager of the funds after Citigroup in New York. Both Citigroup and HSBC have problems related to with SIV’s ( structured investment vehicles).

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Customers of HSBC experience the highest rates of identity theft in the banking industry, according to an investigative study released Wednesday by a UC Berkeley Law School researcher. HSBC is clearly in the lead. Through an extensive Freedom of Information Act request, Chris Hoofnagle, a staff attorney at UC Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law, was able to get detailed records on the individual consumer complaints. Take a look at the chart and you clearly see HSBC has a problem.

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