Georges Elhedery, ‘one of our own’ at helm of HSBC

Reuters/Tom Arnold

Congratulations are in order from the Middle East to Georges Elhedery, who has just been appointed chief executive of HSBC.

It is not often that we in the region get “one of our own” at the top of such a renowned international financial institution.

Elhedery, 50, beat off strong internal competition as well as (presumably) a lengthy list of external candidates to take over the top job at the $125 billion market capitalised bank.

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Most of the commentary since his appointment this week has been to the effect that he is the perfect choice to help the bank navigate through a troubled geofinancial environment in which its historic East-West gravitational pull will be put to the test as never before.

But what has been overlooked in most of the analysis is just what a shot in the arm Elhedery’s appointment will be for the Middle East, and the Arabian Gulf in particular, where he spent a decade at the sharp end of HSBC’s growing business here.

All recognise that balancing the diverging financial interests of Western banking markets in Europe and North America with the ambitious financial institutions of Asia – especially in HSBC’s hinterland of China – will require tact, diplomacy and empathy.

But it will also require a pivot, and Elhedery’s appointment means that the Middle East – where he is supremely well-connected and which has become a global market in its own right – will increasingly become that global fulcrum.

Much has been made also of the fact that HSBC has once again gone for the “internal” candidate for the CEO job, and it is true that Elhedery has spent nearly two decades at HSBC in a variety of roles, many investment bank-oriented but most recently as chief financial officer.

But he is as unlike his internal predecessors as you would expect to find. The joke at HSBC was that a pith helmet was awarded when a candidate landed a top job with global responsibility, symbolising the bank’s tradition as a financial extension of the western “colonial” system.

Elhedery, as a son of Lebanon who grew up there in the war-torn 1970s, will have no use for such headgear.

He is unlike predecessors in other respects too. A polyglot cosmopolitan who spent a recent sabbatical adding Mandarin to his list of linguistic accomplishments, he is a clear break with the past for HSBC.

During his time in Dubai, Elhedery was part of a network of financiers who have since gone on to form a nucleus of power brokers in the economies of the Arabian Gulf. Now they are in commanding policymaking positions across the regions.

There are many examples of this powerful HSBC Gulf diaspora, but one will suffice. Elhedery’s boss for a while in Dubai was Mohammed Al Tuwaijri, chief executive of HSBC Middle East, with whom he struck up a warm relationship.

Al Tuwaijri went on to become minister of economy and planning of his native Saudi Arabia, and is now the main economic adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, responsible for implementing the country’s ambitious Vision 2030 strategy.

That sort of connection will help ensure that HSBC continues to win lucrative business in Saudi Arabia, even as economic conditions there get tighter. The bank already commands the number one slot for fees earned from Saudi transactions in the first half of 2024.

Announcing the appointment, the HSBC chairman Mark Tucker paid tribute to Elhedery’s “strong focus on execution”. But in his time in Dubai he was more than simply a “rainmaker” pulling in fee-paying clients.

He always had an eye for strategy and recognised too the need to explain that strategic vision to the world, via the media.

Many regional journalists looked forward to the regular background briefings Elhedery conducted from Dubai, where – urbane and approachable – he would tell it straight, but with nuance and insight.

HSBC requires such a transparent approach more than ever now, as it seeks to position itself in an increasingly protectionist, anti-trade environment in which US-China tensions look certain to dominate global financial relations.

The bank has so far fended off calls from a big Chinese investor Ping An to break itself up into Western and Eastern units, but it is easy to imagine those tensions surfacing again, especially under a Trump administration.

Elhedery, who enjoyed surfing off Dubai’s Kite Beach when he was stationed here, will have to gauge the prevailing geopolitical winds just right at the helm of HSBC.

Frank Kane is Editor-at-Large of AGBI and an award-winning business journalist. He acts as a consultant to the Ministry of Energy of Saudi Arabia and is a media adviser to First Abu Dhabi Bank of the UAE