Financial, Real Estate, Stock Markets Trends and Current Affairs

Earnings increased to $5.83 billion from $5.73 billion a year earlier,
the London-based lender said today in a statement. That was less than
the $7.76 billion median estimate of 12 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The bank
dropped in London trading.

Loan impairment charges and other credit risk provisions rose to $26.5
billion in 2009 compared with $24.9 billion the previous year, the
company said. Pretax profit in Hong Kong declined to $5.03 billion from
$5.46 billion, and fell 11 percent in the rest of Asia-Pacific to $4.2
billion....

The bank plans to trade its shares in Shanghai and moved Chief
Executive Officer Michael
Geoghegan to Hong Kong
from London last month to sharpen its focus on Asia. HSBC halted
consumer finance loans in the U.S. after racking up provisions of at
least $70 billion in the past four years following its acquisition of
U.S. subprime lender Household International Inc.

“There were a lot of people who were pushing the stock up as a top
stock for this year,” said Simon
Maughan, London-based analyst at MF Global Securities Ltd., who has
a “neutral” recommendation on the bank. “The environment isn’t there to
develop these earnings.”

... HSBC fell 2.9 percent to 698.45 pence as of
9:09 a.m. in London, the biggest decline in the FTSE 350 Index of five U.K. banks which fell 1.9
percent.

... Pretax profit at the investment banking unit more than tripled to
$10.5 billion from $3 billion. It was the only one of HSBC’s divisions
to report a gain in profit.

The bank’s North American unit posted a loss of $7.74 billion from a
loss of $15.53 billion, the bank said.