- Key insight: HSBC taps powerful former Citi executive to bolster its private-banking business.
- Supporting data: HSBC, which aims to be the leading private bank in Asia, the Middle East and the United Kingdom, is trying to increase its assets under management in the UK to $135 billion by 2028.
- Forward look: Liu is tasked with leading a global effort to attract more wealthy customers to HSBC.
HSBC has hired former Citi group executive Ida Liu to be the next CEO of its private bank.
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Liu will join the London-based bank on Jan. 5, about 11 months after she resigned from Citi, where she oversaw its private bank. In her new role, Liu will report to Barry O’Byrne, CEO of HSBC International Wealth and Premier Banking, the company said Monday in a press release.
Liu will be in charge of “accelerating the growth of the private bank” as well as drumming up more business with ultra high net worth clients and “strengthening cross-border connectivity across key wealth corridors,” the bank said. HSBC is trying to double its assets under management in the United Kingdom to $135 billion by 2028, Bloomberg has reported.
Liu’s hiring “reflects our ambition to further strengthen the private bank as the partner of choice for the world’s most sophisticated entrepreneurs and families,” O’Byrne said in a statement.
She will succeed Gabriel Castello, who has been serving as interim CEO of the private bank since the departure late last year of Annabel Spring. HSBC’s private bank is part of its international wealth and premier banking business, one of four core businesses that HSBC operates following a reorganization in January.
Over the past several months, Liu has remained a leading voice in wealth management. She has appeared at conferences and other events to speak about women in finance, global events and the impending intergenerational wealth transfer, in which an anticipated $31 trillion will pass from baby boomers to younger heirs. She is expected to relocate from New York City to London.
In a LinkedIn post Monday, Liu said she’s joining HSBC “at a defining moment for wealth.”
“Clients today are increasingly global, entrepreneurial and multi-generational, creating a powerful opportunity to elevate how private banking serves families and founders worldwide,” Liu wrote. “HSBC’s unmatched global platform, long-standing client relationships, and commitment to innovation provide a rare foundation to shape the future of private banking.”
Liu, who was a multiyear honoree on American Banker’s Most Powerful Women in Finance lists, started her career as an investment banker. She switched gears in 2004 to become a fashion executive and then returned to banking in 2007 after she pitched Citi on launching a fashion, media and entertaining practice within its private bank. Citi liked the idea and hired Liu, who went on to start Citi’s Asian Clients Group to get more business from Citi’s largest Asian clients.
She led Citi’s private bank in New York before becoming the unit’s North American head, a role she held until 2021, when she was promoted to oversee the entirety of Citi’s private bank.
At the time of her departure from Citi, the bank eliminated the role she had been holding and instead focused the private bank on four geographic regions whose leaders now report directly to Andy Sieg, Citi’s head of wealth. The decision to cut a management layer has been a major component of the firmwide organizational overhaul led by Citi Chair and CEO Jane Fraser.
Sieg, who joined Citi in 2023 from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, was the subject earlier this year of an investigation conducted by the law firm Paul Weiss related to his treatment of colleagues, Bloomberg reported in August. At least six managing directors at Citi filed human resources complaints against Sieg, and some of the accusations involved his treatment of Liu.
ACiti spokesperson declined at the time to confirm details in the Bloomberg report.
