Peter PARKS
A man walks past the HSBC bank headquarters in Hong Kong. Peter PARKS/Getty Images

HSBC Holdings plans to fold its Singapore wholesale, retail and private banking businesses into a single legal entity, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly. An HSBC spokesperson did not confirm or deny the plan directly, saying instead that the bank continuously reviews its organizational structure in search of simplification, and that every Asia-Pacific banking entity remains owned, managed and disposed of by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation — with no current plan to change that arrangement.

That distinction matters for Hong Kong. HSBC (00005.HK) carries the heaviest single weighting on the Hang Seng Index, and its Hong Kong-incorporated entity sits above every other Asia-Pacific banking unit, Singapore included. A Singapore-only restructuring would happen inside that Hong Kong-anchored structure, not around it.

The gap in scale between the two hubs is stark. Hong Kong employed more than 30,000 people and carried a wholesale loan book of $144 billion in the first half of 2026, versus roughly 3,600 employees and $21.8 billion in wholesale loans in Singapore, according to the report.

The move would extend a run of consolidation under chief executive Georges Elhedery, who took over in September 2024 and has since closed, merged or sold off business lines across multiple markets to cut costs. In July, HSBC agreed to sell its Singapore life and health insurance unit to Germany's Allianz for $2.1 billion, part of a shift toward a capital-light, fee-based model in the city-state.

HSBC has not said when, or whether, a formal decision on merging the Singapore entities will be announced.