HSBC head of public affairs said to exit after slamming UK’s stance on China

Singapore – HSBC Holdings’ head of public affairs is set to step down shortly after making controversial comments about the British government’s handling of its relationship with China.

Mr Sherard Cowper-Coles will leave the British lender in October, a person familiar with the matter said. The executive has worked at HSBC for a decade, joining the bank in 2013 initially as a senior adviser to the group’s top brass before heading its global public affairs unit.

In his current role, the former British diplomat oversees public policy and government relations around the world for Europe’s largest bank, advising chairman Mark Tucker and senior executives. A spokesperson for HSBC and Mr Cowper-Coles declined to comment.

While the exact reason for the executive’s departure is not yet clear, it comes just over a month after he issued an apology for remarks he had made at a private event in London, where he criticised the British government for being “weak” and allowing itself to be strong-armed by the United States into cutting back business dealings with China.

Mr Cowper-Coles told attendees at the closed-door meeting in June that Britain would often bow to demands from Washington and that the British should not blindly follow the US but look after their own interests, Bloomberg News reported in August. Those comments prompted a backlash from some British lawmakers.

The controversy shows how businesses like HSBC operating in China are struggling to navigate rising geopolitical tensions as the West seeks to dial back commercial ties after courting the Asian power for decades. The British lender, which was founded in colonial Hong Kong about 158 years ago, has identified China as a key market in its broad pivot towards Asia, which accounts for more than half of its income.

The lender has also been under pressure from top shareholder Ping An Insurance Group to improve returns even as the Chinese insurer failed to gain the backing of other investors to compel HSBC to report regularly on a possible carve-out of its Asian unit.

Personal views

Mr Cowper-Coles’ comments followed a visit to China where he met senior government officials in his capacity as the chairman of the China-Britain Business Council, according to the lobby group’s website.

“I apologise for any offence caused,” he said in a statement to Bloomberg News in August. HSBC said at the time that the comments were made in his personal capacity.

In response, Britain’s former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith said the bank had “an awful lot to answer for”, while fellow backbencher Tim Loughton described the lender as an “apologist” for the Chinese government.

Mr Cowper-Coles has also been at the centre of another controversy. In September, he stepped down from his role as the British chair of the Saudi British Joint Business Council. This came weeks after a British newspaper reported some controversial remarks he had made at a speech in July. The former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Afghanistan told students at the University of Oxford that “the Arab mind is empty compared to the Chinese”, according to the Daily Mail.

The former diplomat, who speaks Arabic, also said he wished he had learnt Chinese instead of Arabic when he was in public service because China was “more interesting”.

He was encouraged to give up the position at the Saudi-British lobby group following those comments, Bloomberg News reported in September. BLOOMBERG