HSBC broke with 159-years of tradition today as Pam Kaur became the bank’s first female chief financial officer since its foundation in Hong Kong in 1865.
The promotion will make Kaur one of the most senior women in global banking and hand her responsibility for slashing the bank’s cost base while shepherding it through a major corporate shake-up alongside new chief Georges Elhedery.
In a statement, Elhedery, who was lifted from the role of CFO into the top job over this summer, said Kaur was the “exceptional candidate” in a “strong bench” and the pair would now spearhead the “next stage of the bank’s growth and development”.
But who is Kaur, HSBC’s first female chief financial officer?
Kaur, 60, joined the firm in April 2013 as group head of audit and currently serves as its chief risk and compliance officer.
After qualifying as a chartered accountant with EY and earning an MBA in finance from Panjab University in India, she kicked off her career at Citibank and eventually moved into senior jobs at some of the world’s biggest lenders including Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB.
She has racked up 40 years experience across the UK and the US, according to an HSBC profile.
She was seen as Elhedery’s most likely successor as CFO ahead of Greg Guyett, HSBC’s head of global banking and markets, Willard McLane, the group head of strategy and corporate development, and Kavita Mahtani, the chief financial officer of HSBC’s Europe and Western Markets, Bloomberg previously reported.
“Kaur has strong technical knowledge and experience in treasury, capital, balance sheet and risk management,” HSBC said of her appointment today. “She has served on the group executive committee for over a decade and brings a global perspective and an appreciation of the strategic challenges and opportunities, locally and globally, facing the banking industry in general and HSBC in particular.”
Her paypacket as CFO will consist of a base salary of £803,000, a fixed pay allowance of £1,085,000 per annum and a pension allowance of £80,300 per year.
Alongside that she is entitled to an annual incentive award of up to 215 per cent of her base salary, and a long-term incentive award up to a maximum of 320 per cent of base salary.
Analysts at Hargreaves Lansdown said she would be seen as a “safe pair of hands” given her tenure at the bank and previous senior roles.
UBS banking analyst Jason Napier, said managing costs would be at the top of the agenda for Kaur and HSBC as it pushes ahead with the restructuring.
“Unknown and important are the magnitude of any required restructuring charges: aligning functions for a group with 213,978 staff involves exceptional costs, a divisional shift provides the opportunity for new CEO cost reductions,” he said in a note to investors.