Group chief executive of HSBC Noel Quinn says Growth in India has been consistent and that he sees huge potential in India to be big global supplier as geopolitical concerns for reorganising the global supply chain.
(File image: Reuters)
Group chief executive of HSBC, Noel Quinn says growth in India has been consistent and he sees huge potential in India to be big global supplier as geopolitical concerns for reorganising the global supply chain.
In an interview with Shireen Bhan of CNBC TV 18, he spoke about supply chain, mergers and acquisitions and reglobalisation.
Below are the excerpts from the interview:
Noel Quinn: I am really pleased with the growth we’ve seen and the great thing is, its been consistent, for the last ten years. That is one of our ambitions. Not start-stop, start-stop; into India or out of India but consistent growth, consistent investment and sort of be a reputable player that people can rely on, be dependable and be there for the long term for India. That’s my plan going forward. Continued investments is definitely coming across our business lines. Commercial banking, retail and wealth and global banking in the markets business. We will be there for the long term, its not just one spurt of investment and then walk away, its consistent long term investment.
Shireen Bhan: In some of those areas that you spoke of and I know you want to focus much more on the wealth management side and the asset management side, would those be areas of opportunity from an M and A (Mergers and Acquisitions) perspective?
Noel Quinn: Well, I am pleased to say we’ve already done our first here with an acquisition of our asset management business from L&T. We hope to get an approval of that hopefully shortly. That’s a good platform for future growth in asset management. An I am willing to consider further acquisitions should they be become available in the future. You’d also be be aware we are already in a joint venture on the insurance business, we’ve announced that we’re in discussions to try and increase our share of the joint venture, that’s a 49 per cent. We’ll see how those discussions go. But that, I think is a measure of our appetite to continue to invest in India.
Shireen Bhan: You talked about the changes we’re seeing in supply chains and you believe that this is not ‘deglobalsiation’ that it is ‘reglobalisation’ and that’s what I wanted to pick up on. How much of this ‘reglobalisation’ is going to benefit India? What we’re starting to see is people are looking for moving manufacturing facilities closer to the home market. Where does India find itself in the middle of all of this?
Noel Quinn: There is a numbers factor at play. I think geopolitics is one of the factors. I think Covid made an awful lot of bias to make us realise there shouldn’t be overdependence on anyone’s source of supply or any one particular supplier. There need to be a consistency in supply chain. And I think resilience is an important factor of supply chains. You asked why I used the word ‘reglobalisation’. I think people are in supply chains for a range of factors and they’re sourcing for multiple countries and multiple suppliers and I think India has huge potential to be one of those suppliers going forward. We’ve seen evidence of that already- manufacturing plants are starting to be built in India and credits to the Government of India for creating an environment that is stable politically on the domestic front but they have also made substantive changes in the way the economy works. The introduction of GST, the digitisation of payments, the digitisation of identity, makes it far more easier for a foreign company to come and establish a base here in India.
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