Apparently London’s regulators have nothing to do with HSBC’s potential departure from these shores.
At least, according to one of them: Sir Jon Cunliffe, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, has told the BBC that a big global bank like HSBC would face tough regulation wherever it was located.
His boss Mark Carney had already intimated as much without naming HSBC.
The problem with this view is that HSBC has on repeated occasions cited regulation as one of the factors behind the review of its location, which is due to conclude in a matter of months.
However, it doesn’t suit regulators to admit this.
The fact that a big, systemically significant bank like HSBC feels able to look around the world in an attempt to find a regulatory system more to its liking is deeply disturbing.
The problem for Sir Jon, and for Carney, is that it doesn’t appear that there is all that much they can do about it.
So they are reduced to warning HSBC that because it plays in the global banking Premiership the referees will be tough wherever it goes, while trying to reassure the rest of us that the decision will have nothing to do with regulation and is all about business.
Sadly, saying that doesn’t necessarily make it so, although the World Bank's recent report on how banks are regulated in China (badly) might at least have concentrated a few minds in HSBC’s boardroom.
