HSBC

HSBC serves multinational companies and wealthy clients across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, with Hong Kong and the United Kingdom as the two home retail markets. It has exited a series of smaller Western mass-market franchises so the remaining network matches trade and wealth flows.

Correspondent banking is the dependency other banks have on HSBC: a local bank that needs dollar or trade clearing may rely on a handful of global correspondents. Losing one correspondent relationship can cut a smaller bank off from a currency corridor.

Citi, Standard Chartered, and JPMorgan compete for the same trade-finance and cash-management mandates. A corporate that uses HSBC for letters of credit and cross-border payables has file formats, credit lines, and country coverage that a new bank has to rebuild.

Trade-finance share on Asia-Europe and Asia-Middle East corridors is the commercial contest.

Correspondent accounts are a scarce service for banks that lack their own dollar clearing.

Hong Kong and UK retail deposits fund a group whose wholesale book is international.

An exporter waiting on an HSBC letter of credit cannot ship until that instrument is in place.

A smaller bank that clears dollars through HSBC depends on that account staying open.