As HSBC Holdings’s top executives queued up in July to publicly welcome the installation of Georges Elhedery as the bank’s next chief executive officer, one prominent voice was notably absent from the social media toasts: Nuno Matos.
His disappointment was understandable. Having reached the final round of the appointment process to replace Noel Quinn as CEO, HSBC’s wealth and personal banking head was passed over for the role by the board in favour of the lender’s chief financial officer, Elhedery. Now, Matos is leaving Europe’s largest bank.
Those who have worked with the men said that whoever missed out on the job was unlikely to have stayed much longer. One person familiar with the situation said it was obvious to senior colleagues that the two didn’t get along and the loser would leave shortly thereafter.
With Matos’ departure, HSBC’s loss could soon be some rival lender’s gain as he potentially becomes one of the world’s most eligible bank CEO candidates.
“He is a pedigreed manager with strong international experience, who I am sure would be a good fit at a major wealth manager,” said Joseph Dickerson, head of European banks research at Jefferies in London.
During his nine years at the London-listed bank, Matos rapidly rose up the ranks to eventually head wealth and private banking, the largest division that accounted for about 40 per cent of group revenues. On his watch, the unit’s pretax profit more than tripled to US$11.5 billion in 2023. The Portuguese native’s earlier stints included leading retail businesses at HSBC and Banco Santander.
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But any successful recruiter may have to wait until next year to get Matos on board for his next job because he will remain with HSBC in an advisory capacity through 2024, followed by gardening leave. Matos, 56, declined to comment for this story when contacted by phone, and didn’t respond to a separate text message seeking comment. HSBC declined to comment.
“I’ve decided that this is the right time for me to embrace new opportunities,” Matos said in a memo to staff, noting he plans to use “the experiences I have had, and the relationships I’ve built here and will carry them as I move forward”.
Matos and Elhedery offer a study in contrasts. Their differing management styles were visible to HSBC employees during the months-long CEO search process.
While Elhedery was low key – the Lebanese-born banker doesn’t even have a LinkedIn profile – Matos appeared at times to be running a quasi-presidential campaign for the job. In one LinkedIn post from May, he was pictured at a company event in India dressed in black, bathed in red light against a backdrop of flaming torches.
They are distinct in their personal approach as well. Elhedery is seen as collegial and collaborative, while Matos has a reputation of being more direct, people familiar with both said, asking not to be identified discussing the executives and internal matters.
Even back in 2021, Matos was attempting to make a strong pitch for the CEO job. That year, he uprooted his family and moved to Hong Kong as HSBC shifted much of the bank’s senior management to its most important market. Having relocated to the former British colony, he quickly began to embrace and adapt to life in the vibrant, southern Chinese city.
The past years also saw Matos at the heart of the bank’s strategy to continue its pivot towards Asia, including working on several of the company’s bolt-on acquisitions of wealth and insurance businesses in the region. During his tenure, the bank bought wealth operations in India and Singapore, and recently completed the takeover of Citigroup’s retail wealth portfolio in China.
Such moves mean Matos is one of the few executives up for grabs with the pedigree of working at a large, systemically important bank in the fast-growing Asia region, making him well suited to take on a job at similarly-focused rivals including Standard Chartered. A raft of other global banks – from UBS Group to Citigroup – have also long espoused plans to beef up their wealth business in Asia.
Matos also spearheaded a drive to take the fight to fintech rivals in the retail foreign-exchange market with the launch earlier this year of Zing, an FX platform open to non-HSBC customers.
One client who dealt with Matos said he was a jargon-averse straight shooter and had gained respect by building the bank’s wealth business.
“He’d been given quite a lot of airtime externally with the market and you tend to only give that to people you trust,” said Benjamin Toms, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned up at another European bank somewhere.” BLOOMBERG
