HSBC announces sale of Brazilian arm, 10 pct jump in profits

HSBC Holdings PLC reported Monday that it agreed to sell its Brazilian arm for 5.2 billion U.S. dollars alongside a 10 percent year-on-year rise in pre-tax profits for the first half of this year.

In a statement, Europe's largest bank announced its pre-tax profit was 13.6 billion U.S. dollars in the first six months, compared with 12.3 billion U.S. dollars a year ago.

Stuart Gulliver, group chief executive, said: "Our performance in the first half of 2015 demonstrated the underlying strength of our business. Our diversified, universal model enabled the group to deliver increased profitability in spite of slow global growth."

HSBC also noted Banco Bradesco would buy its Brazilian operations. "The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to complete by Q2 2016," said HSBC.

The transaction is part of the bank's withdrawal from several markets which has not performed well. The bank also wants to sell its Turkish business.

The bank said in the statement that the environment for banking remains challenging. The group's chairman Douglas Flint noted that economic environment is uncertain in many parts of the world, and "regulatory workloads have never been higher."

The group planned to cut 50,000 jobs to reduce costs. It has also been considering shifting its global headquarters from London, possibly to Hong Kong.

In February, reports disclosed that HSBC helped wealthy clients across the world evade hundreds of millions of pounds worth of tax. Endit