http://www.buffalonews.com/incoming/article457953.ece
HSBC Holdings PLC has put 175 of its upstate New York branches for sale, including those in the Buffalo area, according to a report today by American Banker.
Not good news for WNY. Hopefully a non-local bank picks it up so most of the branches will remain open. If M&T grabs it they’ll need to close a bunch because of redundancy.
I’ve done tons of work with First Niagara, IT wise. And I could see them picking this up… Wonder if they bid on any branches…
paging Joe for the 411
I think this belongs in the For Sale section.
OH NO JOE!!! job security?!?
ummmm, HSBC, do you know something we dont know?
bummer
No, half of nyspeed has left NY also…
The top ten banks are heading for disaster including BoA and HSBC. Maybe by QE7 or QE8 they will be OK, you know, after they take all of the tax payors money and we are 100% enslaved.
Don’t get me started.
It’s part of group’s plan from London. They want to devote all of their resources to emerging markets, and areas in the US with a lot of high net worth, and internationally connected customers, since they see that customer group as the one where they have a competitive advantage. Upstate NY has none of the above. They want to sell the upstate branches and the big ass credit cards business, which is the last thing left from the Household Finance disaster, and use the capital to expand the branch network downstate, along the East and West Coasts and in Texas, and especially in Asia. Supposedly back-office jobs, other than ones that deal with card servicing and branch support, are safe for now, but I don’t like it for 3 reasons.
1.) The biggest tie to Buffalo for the US Bank has always been that this is where their legacy Marine Midland headquarters was, and this is where their branch network is. If the branch network is gone, the only thing tying them to Buffalo is relatively cheap labor. Which is still definitely true compared to the other back-office facilities, in Chicago and New York, but not compared to India. The Buffalo lease situation doesn’t help either as “We decided to stay in the tower, as it suits our business needs, for now.” wasn’t exactly a vote of confidence.
2.) We’re going to be on the Chicago plan now for our employee accounts, where you have a whopping 1-2 ATMs in the work building to do all of your transactions. Sucks dick. I’m moving my money out.
3.) The branches in question are very profitable, they are just outside the group’s core strategy and don’t have much growth potential. When you whack 175 out of your ~450 branches, which are profitable, you’re whacking US profits as well, and obviously you’re going to need less support staff for a smaller branch network.
They were in talks to sell both the cards business and branches to Capital One, since they’re all about becoming a real bank now, but there were some disagreements and they ended up buying ING’s US bank instead. Now they’re only interested in cards. My personal choice would be I’d like to see Wells Fargo step in. They are expanding on the East Coast since they picked up Wachovia, and they have the West Coast connections I’m looking for. I’ve long wanted to move out to San Diego and if Buffalo employees are impacted, that would be the boot in the ass I need to get going.
I don’t know that that’s entirely true. A significant part of the credit cards business came in with the Metris acquisition, no?
And then there’s that a lot of (most, perhaps?) high-level management is now in Mettawa/Chicago (and of a Household pedigree). And that the datacenters were migrated to Chicago as well…
Glad I moved on, best wishes to those who’re still there.
Not all of cards was from Household but the worst performing ones were, think Orchard Bank et al. They’ve been moving certain cards out of the Nevada bank, which is Household, and into HBUS for a few quarters now. The store cards and private label stuff, group deemed non-core and wants no part of cause there’s no money in it. They pushed Mettawa for all of the execs for the last few years so hard, now the word I’m getting is that they’re trying to move the Mettawa building as part of the cards deal, since it’s half empty now anyway and most of what’s left is card related, and shift everyone back to the other buildings they still own there. Love how senior management pushes one strategy super intense then completely reverses course at the drop of a hat. Now they’re pushing NYC for execs.
The Volo data center thing is still a clusterfuck. Totally ruined most of the apps we run out of Buffalo unless you go thru Citrix.
In for the continued convo…
WNY can’t do anything right. LOL
So, should I be pulling my money out of HSBC and switching to somewhere else? Is this 100% going to happen, where I won’t be able to find an ATM in 6 months?
Wait and see. It’s not 100% and even if it did happen your deposits would just get transferred to the other bank, then you could decide whether to stay with them or switch.
Closed all my HSBC accounts on lunch today.
To be fair, this was not related to their most recent announcement. I’ve been fed up with their bullshit promises of “next quarter it will be ready” in regards to real time ATM and home banking services. They’ve been pitching “next quarter” for over 3 years. When they made the announcement that about the tower and that their big new building project was dead I decided that was the last straw. Around the same time M&T was hiring 100 people locally so that’s where all my accounts are now. Took a while to do the move because of all my auto-pay crap, direct deposits, linked accounts etc etc.
Need to support businesses that actually employ people in this area, not "Holy Shit my Bank’s Chinese. It’s definitely sad to see that HSBC took Marine Midland Bank, which had been around since 1850 in Buffalo, and killed it in 12 years.
There’s a few correct alternate acronyms for HSBC, such as Holy Shit Buffalo’s Cold and Hot Sauce and Blue Cheese, but anything indicating that it’s a Chinese company is entirely correct. It’s a British bank.
Being an M&T employee…in on one. I know we are finalizing the purchase of Wilmington Trust so I didn’t think there would be any chance of us purchasing this…and then a rumor went around the office today that we are “possibly buying another bank” I have no facts to support this but if I get any I’ll pass them along here
HSBC Holdings plc was founded in London in 1991 by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation to act as a new group holding company and to enable the acquisition of UK-based Midland Bank. The origins of the bank lie in Hong Kong and Shanghai, where branches were first opened in 1865. Today HSBC remains the largest bank in Hong Kong, and recent expansion in mainland China, where it is now the largest international bank, has returned it to that part of its roots.
So yeah, Holy Shit my Banks Chinese. 
I really doubt M&T will go after this just because of the anti-trust mess it would be. Plus, M&T has a huge branch network in the same area as the HSBC branches. It would be like McDonalds buying up all the area Burger Kings so they could have a McDonalds across the street from every McDonalds. If M&T wants the deposit accounts at these HSBC branches they can aggressively market directly to the nervous customers without having to buy a bunch of redundant buildings and employees.