Leadership consultant | Senior leadership team & board facilitator | Author: The Modern In-house Lawyer | Currently writing Most Mondays: how to find peace at work, most of the time and looking for a publisher/agent
$28bn is a colossal achievement—a credit to you and your colleagues in a world where society's scoreboard primarily measures ROI. What is measured gets delivered. But I notice your reference to balancing your personal and work life. It implies a comparable cost, if not a toll on you and others. Having experienced a year - 2022 - in and out of hospital, mainly in isolation for chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant for mantle cell lymphoma and now thankfully in remission, I have reframed my attitude to life generally and to work specifically. This reframing has changed my facilitation work with boards - executive and main. I focus now on helping them find peace - even joy - at work on their boards (as unlikely and as mad as that may sound) and not afterwards. So, if you had delivered just 10% less - that's $2.8bn less - and you had reported $25bn, would anyone think less of you and your board? And if your board had spent $2.8bn MORE on the environment and society (including on your and your board's wellbeing and the wellbeing of all your people worldwide) and your P&L looked like this, Dividends available before ESG costs: $28bn. ESG costs $2.8bn. Dividends after ESG Costs: $25bn - would you say I am being unrealistic?
Today is an emotional day as I announce my decision to retire as HSBC Group Chief Executive. Working for this organisation for the past 37 years has been nothing short of phenomenal. It has given me some unforgettable memories and experiences, especially the time I spent living in Hong Kong and serving clients across Asia. Leading it for the last five years has been a privilege I never imagined. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved in transforming the bank and driving a record financial performance in 2023. The evidence is the almost $28bn of dividends and share buy-backs that we’ve announced over the last 15 months. It has been a huge collective team effort and I want to pay tribute to all my colleagues for their tremendous efforts. After a non-stop 37-year career and an intense last 16 years since I took on the role of leading the UK Commercial Bank, this is the right decision for me and for HSBC. In the future, I’m looking forward to striking a better balance between my work and personal life. But in the meantime, my full focus is on keeping the good momentum going.