By Kosaku Narioka


HSBC posted a drop in first-quarter net profit and said that Group Chief Executive Noel Quinn will retire from the company.

HSBC said net profit fell 1.4% to $10.18 billion for the three months ended March, attributing the result partly to lower net interest income, higher credit costs and one-off losses related to its plan to sell its Argentina business.

Quarterly net profit beat the estimate of $9.73 billion in a poll of analysts by Visible Alpha.

The London-based bank also said that its group CEO will step down after nearly five years in the role and that the board had begun a formal process to find a successor.

HSBC said that Quinn managed to simplify the bank's operations during his tenure, most recently with the sale of the company's Canada and Argentina operations.

HSBC said its board approved a dividend of $0.31 per share, including a special dividend of $0.21 per share from proceeds of the sale of Canada business, and said it planned to buy back up to $3 billion of its own shares.

HSBC has long earned most of its income in Asia and has been shifting even more resources into the region to seize on a rapidly rising middle class, even while other Western banks have scaled back in the region.

First-quarter net interest income fell to $8.65 billion from $8.96 billion.

The bottom line in the year-earlier period was buoyed by one-off gains related to the sale of its retail banking operations in France and the acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank's U.K. unit.

Quarterly net profit was nonetheless an improvement from net loss in the final quarter of 2023, when HSBC wrote down the value of its stake in major Chinese lender Bank of Communications by $3 billion, in part because of a slowdown in China's economic growth.


Write to Kosaku Narioka at kosaku.narioka@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

04-30-24 0107ET