Comical banking ?

You are stupid if you thought banks just do banking. They take part in politics.

That is what HSBC did. It ‘downgraded’ HongKong’s securities to ‘underweight’. That meant that the stocks in HongKong were not attractive to buy now. Do you know the reason ? A pro-democracy movement that was underway in HongKong.

Shocked world reacted and immediately HSBC went back on its analysis. Then it put ‘democracy movement’ as the final item in its many other reasons. How did the ‘new’ reasons come about just in a day ? Who was behind these ‘new’ reasons ? More importantly who was behind the ‘old’ reason ?

The truth is plain and simple. Beijing does not take kindly to the democracy protests. It sees such protests as harbingers of freedom in mainland China. Hence exerted pressure on HSBC to ‘downgrade’ its own region.

Later when the twitterati went up in anger, HSBC ‘revised’ the reasons.

I know P.G.Wodehouse worked for HSBC for some years. The bank need not become a comedy just because of that.

Author: Amaruvi's Aphorisms

Banker by day, blogger by night and a reader throughout. View all posts by Amaruvi's Aphorisms