London
Bank payout: HSBC, Britain’s biggest bank, is returning $4bn to shareholders through a $2bn share buyback and a ten cents-a-share interim dividend, says Ben Martin in The Times. Pre-tax profits rose to $21.7bn in the first six months of this year, from $8.8bn a year earlier, while revenue climbed by half to $36.9bn. Rising interest rates supplemented one-off gains relating to the planned sale of its French retail arm and its rescue takeover in March of Silicon Valley Bank UK. HSBC will be hoping the shareholder payout goes some way to placating Ping An – the Chinese insurer and HSBC’s biggest shareholder that had been agitating to break up the lender by spinning off its main Asian business. Investors had, however, resisted that proposal and HSBC boss Noel Quinn (pictured) said the lender had now “moved on” from the row.
The rise in the Bank of England’s base rate to a 15-year high of 5% has enabled commercial lenders to expand their net asset margins – the difference between how much interest they
