HSBC's Pam Kaur smashes glass ceiling in major overhaul

By Sinead Cruise and Lawrence White

LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC's history-making new chief financial officer Pam Kaur is a battle-hardened risk and audit veteran who credits her success to the "Power of Chi".

The first woman to occupy the role in the bank's 160-year history, she has observed at close quarters the challenges HSBC faces under new CEO Georges Elhedery, as it navigates a new interest rate cycle and a more fractious relationship between China and the West.

Indian-born Kaur, 60, joined HSBC from Deutsche Bank in April 2013, rising to the role of group chief risk and compliance officer before landing her latest promotion in a sweeping revamp announced on Tuesday.

Prior to HSBC, Kaur held senior risk and audit positions at Citi and Lloyds Banking Group before a crisis-era stint at bailed-out UK lender Royal Bank of Scotland.

Posts on professional networking platform LinkedIn offer a glimpse into Kaur's likely management style, with courage and confidence described as staples of successful leadership under a "Power of Chi" management framework she has promoted to more than 10,000 followers.

She will need all the chi, or positive energy, she can muster as global lenders like HSBC struggle to insulate strategies from geopolitics, contain the spiralling costs of doing business while also tapping into new sources of revenue.

"I'm not sure you could actually find a greater collection of banks that have been through the fiery furnaces of issues, and she's been in finance, in audit or in risk in all of them," said one former co-worker, commenting on Kaur's rich experience.

"You never want anyone in a senior position seeing bad stuff for the first time. You need someone who's actually been around, who has faced live bullets before they go into battle," the person said.

Kaur is expected to maintain a relatively low public profile as CFO, affording the newly-installed CEO Elhdedery space to focus on client-facing activities including winning greater business from HSBC's corporate customers, sources said.

However, the London-based executive, who holds an MBA from India's Panjab University will be no pushover when it comes to devising strategy, the sources said, and will bring her extensive experience to bear on HSBC's future direction.

Elhedery said Tuesday's reorganisation would help unleash the lender's full potential, although analysts said it lacked detail about savings and stoked debate about the changes he and Kaur might pursue next.

"It does beg an obvious question around the future of the remaining retail businesses outside of the UK and Hong Kong, especially Mexico," Alex Potter, global financials analyst at abrdn, said.

While calls for a break-up of the bank from its biggest shareholder Ping An Insurance Group have faded, other investors are wondering what else management can do to improve their risk-adjusted returns.

HSBC shares have underperformed peers so far this year, rising 7% versus the European index's 20% gain, despite multi-billion dollar share buyback programmes and consistent dividend growth, raising questions about where profit growth is likely to come from.

GENDER GAP

Kaur joins a small but growing group of women in top global banking roles, including Citi CEO Jane Fraser, Morgan Stanley CFO Sharon Yeshaya and JP Morgan high fliers Mary Erdoes, Marianne Lake and Jennifer Piepszak.

Kaur, in her LinkedIn profile, describes herself as a "passionate supporter of diversity and inclusion" and a global sponsor of HSBC's Embrace employee network which helps attract, retain and engage a more diverse ethnic and multicultural workforce among the lender's 225,000 staff worldwide.

Beyond the immediate challenges of the CFO role, Kaur is seen by some as likely to push for increased momentum in the bank's efforts to narrow its gender pay gap.

The gap at HSBC across all its UK entities, at 43.2% in 2023, is not just one of the widest in banking but across all industry too.

($1 = 0.7717 pounds)

(Reporting by Sinead Cruise and Lawrence White; Editing by Susan Fenton)