British bank HSBC announced its intention to buy back $2 billion worth of its shares, as part of the Asian-focused bank’s plan to return funds to shareholders after achieving results that exceeded expectations during the first quarter of this year.
And the “Bloomberg” economic news agency indicated that the London-based bank will resume disbursing quarterly cash dividends for the first time since 2019, to accelerate the pace of disbursement of return on capital, at a time when it is facing increasing pressure from one of the largest shareholders to increase profitability.
This comes at a time when the bank’s pre-tax profits tripled to $12.89 billion, compared to $4.14 billion during the same period last year, while analysts had expected profits to reach $8.64 billion.
The jump in profits was partly driven by the adverse effect of depreciation associated with the delay in the sale of the bank’s retail banking arm in France, and the reserving of part of the profits to finance the purchase of the collapsed US branch of Silicon Valley Bank “SVB” in Britain.
HSBC’s net profit, distributable to shareholders during the first quarter of this year, amounted to $10.33 billion, compared to $2.76 billion during the same period last year.
The bank’s revenues also increased during the first quarter of this year by 64% to reach $20.2 billion, thanks to the increase in the revenues of lending activity in all its global branches, as a result of the increase in key interest rates in most countries of the world.
