LONDON (Reuters) – HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA.L) should unveil a half-year profit of near $11 billion on Monday, flat from a year earlier as weak investment bank trading and wobbly U.S. and European economies offset growth in Asia.
New HSBC CEO Stuart Gulliver is overhauling Europe’s biggest bank by slashing costs by up to $3.5 billion, selling its U.S. credit card arm and other assets, and retreating from countries where it is sub-scale.
The aim is to sharpen the focus on Asia and investors want to see progress made on that plan.
HSBC is the first of Britain’s big banks to report and should show a pretax profit for the six months to the end of June of $10.9 billion, compared with $11.1 billion a year earlier, according to the average of forecasts from 12 banks and brokerages polled by Reuters.
Earnings will be hurt by a slump in fixed income trading in the
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