(Reuters) — HSBC\u00a0said on Friday it would sell its A$36 billion ($25.30 billion) Australian home and personal loan portfolio to investment giant Blackstone, marking its phased exit from retail banking in the country.<\/p>\n
The transaction is the latest move in CEO Georges Elhedery’s overhaul of the bank as he seeks to simplify operations, improve returns and redeploy capital toward higher-growth businesses.<\/p>\n
Since assuming the top job in September 2024, Elhedery has cut management ranks, reduced costs and shed non-core operations as he reshapes the bank’s global footprint.<\/p>\n
The bank last week agreed to sell its Singapore insurance unit to Germany’s Allianz SE\u00a0and in May struck a deal to divest its retail and wealth operations in Indonesia to Singapore’s Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.<\/p>\n
Since the global financial crisis, HSBC has been scaling back its worldwide footprint, exiting low-returning consumer banking activities in markets ranging from France and Greece to Canada.<\/p>\n
The Australian portfolio will be acquired by Virgo BidCo, a vehicle wholly owned by funds managed by Blackstone affiliates, in a transaction expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory and competition approvals.<\/p>\n
Blackstone said separately that it has invested in Australia for nearly two decades and plans to continue deploying significant capital to support the country’s housing market.<\/p>\n
HSBC said it would continue investing in its corporate and institutional banking business across Australia and New Zealand, moving away from consumer lending as part of the restructuring.<\/p>\n
The transaction comes as Australia’s housing market faces softer demand, with higher borrowing costs and tax changes weighing on investor activity.<\/p>\n
Australian lender Westpac said in June mortgage applications had declined 10% since the government’s May budget, while National Australia Bank on Thursday posted a 15% drop in applications in the June quarter.<\/p>\n
HSBC expects the disposal to result in a loss of less than $100 million by the first half of 2027 and to incur about $300 million in restructuring costs linked to the retail wind-down. It also expects to recognize about $300 million in foreign currency translation losses, with no impact on its CET1 ratio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Reuters) — HSBC\u00a0said on Friday it would sell its A$36 billion ($25.30 billion) Australian home and personal loan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[20667],"tags":[40397,11730,38965,4831,9881,40295,24037,22259,22444],"class_list":["post-94832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hsbc","tag-25bn","tag-australian","tag-blackstone","tag-home","tag-hsbc","tag-loan","tag-personal","tag-portfolio","tag-sell"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/117015285957662758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}