Household HSBC Watch

How are HSBC and high gasoline prices related? Prices are driven by speculators. We “are experiencing demand shock from a new category of speculators: institutional investors like corporate and government pension funds, university endowments, and sovereign wealth funds,” said Michael Masters, managing member of Masters Capital Management, a Virgin Islands-based hedge fund. “Index […]

AK in Oregon sent this op-ed piece. We are publishing it here instead of in our complaints blog:
“HSBC- predatory lenders who slam insurance, offer over market rates and fees, and treat employees with disrespect.

When I started working at HFC I was just out of college. I was excited to have a job […]

An HSBC Finance employee advised us of this frightening move by HSBC, saying “As a current employee I am appauled to see Beneficial and HFC’s latest trick which seems to be avoiding federal caps on interest rates. As of May 5th they rolled out their new pricing sheets with rates set above the […]

One fact everyone knows about HSBC Finance Corporation, a subprime division of HSBC, is the company will not modify or change anything willingly. When HSBC says they modified 11,900 sub-prime mortgages, valued at $1.9bn, that were due to reset to punitively high rates this year it was not done willingly. HSBC Finance has […]

We wonder why HSBC is raising credit card interest rates for some customers. No information is given, other than “it was a business decision.” Others call it predatory lending - a term that HSBC Finance (formerly Household International) is very familiar with. The federal government lowered the interest rates to a point […]

HSBC also likes India as a developing nation. In a recent article we wrote about problems in Vietnam, another HSBC favorite. India’s inflation accelerated to a 13-month high. That means India probably will not see an interest rate reduction any time soon. HSBC Group Plc in the past week reversed their […]

For those who lost their homes to foreclosure by Household International in 2002 or before, there is more information. Many people thought Household International was a predatory lender. The majority thought Household’s $484 million settlement was too low. A commentary by Doug Noland says “The nexus at the time was the […]

On one hand HSBC spokesman Michael Trevino said tax refund loans “represents a very small portion’’ of HSBC’s revenue. On the other hand such loans represent bad publicity for HSBC, with interest rates sometimes over 100 percent. Lawsuits such as Carnegie vs Household, paid by HSBC in 2007, cast HSBC in a bad […]

The U.S. subsidiary of British financial conglomerate HSBC Holdings PLC spent more than $1.3 million in the first half of 2007 to lobby the federal government, according to a recent disclosure form. HSBC once claimed they never lobby for anything and had no lobbying effort. Once against company policy, HSBC found out their […]

HSBC plans to refocus on emerging markets as the bank’s experiment with Household International taught them to play elsewhere. The problem with emerging markets is that they are emerging. Take the case of China’s equivalent of the US Food and Drug Administration chief. Within three weeks the man was charged with fraud, […]