HSBC’s Americas Chief Says He Won’t Compel 5 Days in the Office

Todd Gillespie and Manus Cranny
Thu, May 23, 2024 


(Bloomberg) -- HSBC Holdings Plc won’t force US staffers back to the office five days a week unless new regulations from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority require it.

“We will adjust to the Finra rules, we will make sure whoever needs to be here five days a week will be here five days a week, but I don’t want to decree people coming back,” Michael Roberts, chief executive officer for the US and Americas, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “I want them to come back because they want to come back and they feel productive and they feel good about it.”

Finra is preparing to sunset pandemic-era accommodations for monitoring brokers, traders and other staff. Banks are weighing how many workers they’ll force to return to the office full-time, while the regulator itself has said tighter attendance policies aren’t necessarily required, depending on how banks respond to the rules.

Even without new requirements, HSBC’s New York office attendance has doubled to 80% after the company opened its new building to employees, Roberts said at the offices in New York’s Hudson Yards neighborhood.

Read More: Wall Street’s Five-Day Office Rules Aren’t Our Fault, Finra Says

“Today, our overall attendance levels are 80%,” he added. “Before we moved? Less than 40%. We’re running out of space very quickly, and in fact we just took some additional space in this building.”

The London-based company is looking to establish more of a footprint in the US, where many of its wealthiest corporate and individual clients have a significant presence. HSBC officially opens its local office on Thursday, where about 400 traders are working and the bank recently opened a new flagship wealth hub. It has about 214,000 employees worldwide.

The bank is also on the hunt for its next chief executive officer after Noel Quinn’s surprise announcement last month that he’ll be stepping down. The board is leaning toward appointing an internal candidate, Bloomberg reported earlier this month.

There “clearly is an advantage for someone who knows the institution” to take the top job, Roberts said, declining to say if he will put himself up for it. The bank is talking to both internal and external candidates, he added.