HSBC learns to play the vuvuzela

THE closest HSBC traditionally got to sub-Saharan Africa was sending its Hong Kong-bound staff round the Cape of Good Hope before the Suez Canal opened in 1869. It is a sign of the region’s vastly improved prospects and the bank’s evolving strategy that HSBC is now in talks to buy a controlling stake in Nedbank, one of South Africa’s big four banks, with a market value of $9 billion.

As Africa gets richer and does more trade with Asia, foreign banks are becoming more interested. That was the logic cited in 2007 when China Development Bank bought a stake in Barclays, which owns a big African business, and a few months later when ICBC, China’s biggest bank, bought a 20% stake in Standard Bank, South Africa’s largest, which has operations in some neighbouring countries. Citigroup and Standard Chartered, which along with Barclays have the biggest pan-African networks, now talk more about their prospects there. Portugal’s banks, which dominate in Angola and Mozambique, view their operations there as jewels. …

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