HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), the largest European bank by assets, plans to double its Asia-Pacific prime finance team’s cut of hedge-fund assets in the coming year, said Melvyn Ford, regional head of the business.
It is part of a target to improve its standing by two places to the region’s sixth-largest prime broker over the 12 months, Ford said in an interview in Hong Kong yesterday. HSBC was ranked eighth in its first full year in a survey by trade journal AsiaHedge released this month.
HSBC was a late entrant to the Asia-Pacific prime brokerage market dominated by the likes of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse Group AG. Banks are competing for regional hedge-fund assets that slipped 1 percent to $139 billion in 2012 after the closures of those unable to cope with falling revenue and rising costs that cut the number of funds by 5 percent, according to AsiaHedge.
“For everyone, it has been a challenging year,” said Ford. “We definitely announced our arrival. We’re trying to pick the clients and partner with clients that really want to be trading counterparts of HSBC.”
