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Since HSBC announced the surprise departure of its chief executive Noel Quinn in April, there has been a regular refrain among people within or close to the UK-listed lender: the job is Georges Elhedery’s to lose.
On Wednesday, HSBC named the banker, seen as Quinn’s heir apparent since returning from a sabbatical to be appointed chief financial officer in 2022, as its next chief executive.
He has run HSBC’s global markets business, a division that accounted for almost a quarter of total revenue last year. The Lebanese-born banker is well-connected in the Middle East, a region that forms an important part of the bank’s growth plans and is playing a more powerful role on the world stage at a time of US-China tensions.
Elhedery is “pretty introverted”, said a person who has worked with him in the past, but he has a “high IQ” and is “technically way ahead” of many peers.
After growing up in Beirut, Elhedery moved to France to study at the École Polytechnique, an elite Parisian engineering school. He did an internship on the trading floor of French financial group Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations and went on to work at Goldman Sachs and Paribas before joining HSBC in 2005.
Elhedery, who speaks Arabic, English, French, German and Spanish, learned enough Mandarin Chinese during his sabbatical to be conversational with staff.
“He can talk about the weather in [Mandarin] and that makes a difference” in building relationships in China, said another person who knows him.
But Elhedery has only been chief financial officer for a relatively short period and has never worked for the bank in Hong Kong, a market that HSBC relies on for about a third of its revenues — far more than the contribution of its UK business to its global performance.
Building the relationships that will let the bank keep straddling east and west amid rising tensions between Beijing and Washington is expected to be his biggest challenge. Those close to Elhedery say he is up to the job.
“He can talk to both east and west,” said a senior executive at the bank. “He’s calm, well-spoken and inherently international.”
