China’s economic troubles are hurting global banks

HSBC posted a big drop in quarterly profit Wednesday after taking a $3 billion hit on its stake in China’s Bank of Communications (BoCom) and another charge related to exposure to the country’s troubled real estate industry.

HSBC posted a big drop in quarterly profit Wednesday after taking a $3 billion hit on its stake in China’s Bank of Communications (BoCom) and another charge related to exposure to the country’s troubled real estate industry. The Asia-focused lender reported an 80% drop in pretax profit in the last three months of 2023, compared to the same period in 2022, it said in a statement. HSBC attributed the decline to a pair of charges that it took. Of the total, $3 billion was related to BoCom, one of China’s biggest banks, while $2 billion was from selling its retail banking business in France. HSBC said the $3 billion impairment was calculated after a December evaluation, which included an estimate of future cash flows at BoCom. Separately, HSBC made $3.4 billion in provisions to cover expected credit losses and other charges related to its exposure to the commercial real estate sector in mainland China. “Backing out a lot of the mess, it looks like performance was a little worse than expected with higher operating costs more than offsetting slightly better impairments,” Matt Britzman, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, wrote in a research note.