30 banking
Heaven is a road trip
There are international multi-million deals to be done, but HSBC area director for corporate banking Anthony Reed plans to travel the south with his team and make things happen locally too. Alison Tilley of The Business Magazine met a man on a mission …
“We work with some incredible businesses,” says Reed, whose remit is to nurture more than 400 clients in the £6.5 million to £350m turnover bracket. “From the range of really fast-growing entrepreneurial clients to sixth or seventh-generation family businesses.
“The range of clients is vast, some who trade with 35 different countries, some in product development stage and others , who have a real domestic focus. There's a whole plethora of businesses on the scale. It's very exciting and dynamic.”
His role is as much about bringing in new talent as managing this varied client base; something he's buzzing with right now, as his team – covering Hampshire and Dorset – has almost doubled in a year.
“We've grown from seven relationship managers to 11, brought in three corporate analysts and boosted our leadership team as well with another deputy director, Tim Wallis joining Alison Richardson. Forty percent of the team are new and from very different backgrounds.”
This is key to Reed's vision of the perfect team, covering the patch and working closely with clients. He wasn't seeking number crunchers.
“Clients do not want people who just sit there and read balance sheets. We absolutely have to do this, however we need to add value; to connect them with other clients and other
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opportunities, as one example. This is our purpose to enable local businesses and economies to thrive, so we have to be proactive.”
The new line-up includes three relationship directors, Melissa Leung on a job share after a two- year maternity and sabbatical, Nicky Busst, a specialist in UK trade overseas joining from UKTI, and Gemma Wild, who joins with a strong corportate finance background. They are supported with new analysts, who have degrees in physics and biochemistry. Reed believes this smorgasbord of talent might not have been served up before the banking crisis in 2008.
“It's interesting and encouraging that we're attracting really good talent; people who want to make a difference. We're changing our culture in the way we deal with clients – so I don't think these people would have been attracted to banking 10 or 15 years ago.”
Reed's own background is diverse. Leaving Bath Spa University with a business degree, he started his career in retail including a spell as retail manager at his beloved Swindon Town FC - “That was fascinating”.
Afterwards, he went from managing stores for Halfords to joining HSBC as manager of a tiny branch in Midsomer Norton.
He's not alone in rising rapidly through the ranks. “Our head of
corporate banking in the UK started as a cashier in Cardiff, worked her way through the bank, including country head in Indonesia, before coming to the UK. There are many stories like that.”
Today, although based in the West Country with his wife and two young children, he travels the South Coast to manage his talent and share it with clients. His perfect working day would be in the car, “…with some of the team meeting and supporting our clients. One of the misconceptions about banking is that all we do is lend money. Actually we do more than that; it's very much a people business, always aligned to what businesses want to achieve. That may be about lending money, something which we are supporting with our £10 billion fund for UK business, but sometimes it's about being a critical friend; someone to bounce ideas off".
HSBC's local HQ overlooks Southampton International Airport – a fitting symbol of the bank's local to international reputation. And the leap from grassroots to global is sometimes in evidence in unlikely places.
“The majority of our clients are either directly or indirectly impacted by the global economy. We have clients who bring in skilled employees from overseas, export their goods and services, or are finding new niche markets to trade with. Part of
our pivot to Asia and focus on the Pearl River Delta area is to support clients in taking advantage of the opportunities."
And Southampton is a hotbed of ideas. The bank was involved with a recent entrepreneurial event in the city – which garnered the biggest audience of similar events in the UK. “That really says a lot about the characteristics of the local market – there are a lot of people doing really goundbreaking things.”
So while he acknowledges that businesses are keeping calm and carrying on in a state of ‘unknowing' with much political and economic unpredictability from the UK to Europe to the US, Reed is optimistic and enthusiastic about local economy in the two counties.
In fact, he just wants to get in the car and get to it.
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH COAST – JULY/AUGUST 2016
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