HSBC appoints insider Noel Quinn as chief executive

HSBC said on Tuesday it appointed Noel Quinn as chief executive officer, effective immediately, ending a search ongoing since last August when Chairman Mark Tucker ousted John Flint in a shock move. Quinn, who joined HSBC in 1987 and had been interim CEO, takes the full-time job following media reports that Tucker had been seeking to hire external candidates, including Unicredit boss Jean Pierre Mustier.

"Noel has proven to be the outstanding candidate to take on a role permanently that he has performed impressively on an interim basis since August 2019," Tucker said. Quinn takes the helm of Europe's biggest bank as it faces a challenging outlook, with the impact of the coronavirus epidemic adding to its longstanding woes of underperformance in the United States, low interest rates and a struggling investment bank.

Quinn will earn a base salary of 1.27 million pounds ($1.54 million) per annum, the bank said. ($1 = 0.8271 pounds) (Additional reporting by Samantha Machado in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi and Leslie Adler)