HSBC may rethink US credit cards business

The bank said its US credit card business broke even in the first quarter in “very adverse” conditions, and financial and regulatory headwinds remain. “If those become too strong, and we are not able to leverage this business more fully on a group basis, we may have to rethink it,” HSBC Chief Executive Officer Michael Geoghegan had said on Friday.

That decision is unlikely to be made within the next 18 months, Geoghegan told Reuters. About 36 million of HSBC’s 100 million credit card customers are in the US, and any global cards business with less than 100 million risks being “sub-scale,” he said.