Read Giovanni's story
What I want to achieve in HSBC is what I want to achieve in my career and life in general, which is knowledge and expertise. I think this is a great place to achieve both of them.
What really surprised me about the Bank is the great degree of client knowledge and client expertise which I found. We have relationship managers in place in virtually every country of the world. More likely than not, they will have a long-term relationship with a particular client, so if you are not sure, if you think that a certain party may be interested to do a certain transaction that you are thinking about, one of the first things you do is start making calls internal to the organisation to find out what kind of relationship we have and how well we know the client. And sure enough there will be somebody there who's done business with them and knows what their needs are. I was really surprised about that.
Global connectivity is really at the heart of what we do every day. For example, we are working for a client based in Saudi and, of course, part of the coverage is provided by our office in Dubai. But we're also working on it from our team based in London plus we have additional expertise and coverage provided by people in the United States. All of this would not be possible without a functional and working global connectivity.
I find it fairly challenging to describe my colleagues, and the reason for that is that you would tend to think that in an environment like investment banking where you have high pressure to deliver things in a timely fashion and very standardised manner, you would tend to think that the working environment is very standardised and the type of people you meet are very standardised. Well actually this is not the case. I found a quite diverse environment and a broad collection of unique characters and individuals.
If there is a corporate culture within HSBC, it's probably the inclusive nature and respect of diversity that I've found within it. Diversity is seen as a way of enriching the organisation rather than being a threat to the way of working, and this is quite unique.
HSBC is the future of banking because of its very business model, I believe. HSBC's relationship with the client is for the long-term and is very sustainable. I think that during the crisis it has emerged very clear and I think rightly so, the public concern, that the banks should contribute to the welfare and to the stability, if you want, of the financial system, rather than being a threat to it.
If there is one bank that has done very well during the financial crisis, it is HSBC. And that's why I believe that HSBC, going forward, is going to be the model for other banks as well, both in terms of stability and what they represent for clients, because they never close for business – even in tough times.
