HSBC Holdings Plc has appointed Brendan Nelson as its next chair, replacing hard-charging financier Mark Tucker, who was leading the biggest lender in Europe for much of the past decade.
In a statement, the London-headquartered bank said on Wednesday that the move comes after “follows a robust process that considered both internal and external candidates.” Nelson had been serving as interim group chair since October 1, and he joined the board in September 2023.
He replaces the lender who could not identify an appropriate external candidate after a shortlist of names that included former politicians and financiers like Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Kevin Sneader and Richard Gnodde, among others.
It comes as Chief Executive Officer Georges Elhedery drives through a monumental redesign of HSBC that has seen the bank restructured into four new units.
The Asia-centric lender is also having to deal with continuing trade disputes between the US and China, an unstable relationship that the new chairman will have to assist the bank in navigating.
The replacement of Tucker, who was the chairperson and was behind most of the major decisions made in the bank, has taken the bank months to find an appropriate replacement.
He announced in June that his retirement would be at the end of September and that join Hong Kong-based insurer AIA Group Ltd as a non-executive chairman.
The process has been keenly watched by investors with anticipation of the direction that HSBC will take after Tucker departs. The reason is that he has supervised four CEOs in his lifetime at the bank, of which three were put there by him, and has exercised the kind of hands-on control that most non-executive chairs do not have.
A Senior Independent Director, who headed the process, Ann Godbehere, said that “Since assuming the role of interim Group Chair, Brendan has demonstrated his excellent leadership capabilities backed by his strong banking and governance credentials.”
Nelson stated that he did not anticipate a tenure as long a tenure as his predecessor’s, partly based on UK corporate governance legislation that does not permit an independent director to serve more than nine years on the board of a company.
Speaking at the Financial Times banking conference in December, Elhedery indicated that Nelson would not serve the bank as a long-term chairman, telling an audience that he had “expressed a desire not to do it for the full six to nine years, given the stage of his career.”
Nelson is a renowned personality in the domain of British boardrooms, having served as a board member at BP Plc and NatWest Group Plc in the past.
He is an accountant who has over 25 years of experience at KPMG in where he served in different roles such as the global chairman of banking and the global chairman of financial services.
In a statement, Nelson added that “I look forward to continuing to work with the Board, Georges, and the wider management team as we deliver on our strategic and financial objectives.”
