HSBC under review
The bank's investment case is under review following its results and rights issue news
HSBC is offering the new shares at a 50% discount to Friday's closing price, deeper than the 30% discount we anticipated. It is a sign of HSBC's relative strength during the financial crisis that its rights offering is fully underwritten by its investment banks, Goldman Sachs and RBS Hoare Govett, among others, and that HSBC is not relying on government support like many of its peers.
HSBC also announced that it is closing its US consumer finance arm, formerly Household, and is taking a goodwill write-down of US$10.6 billion. Excluding the goodwill write-down, HSBC's full-year pretax profit of US$19.9 billion was well ahead of our expectations, mainly because credit quality has not deteriorated as quickly as we expected. Including the write-down, however, earnings failed to meet our expectations.
Erin Davis is an equity analyst at Morningstar US.