John Bond (banker)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sir John Reginald Hartnell Bond (龐約翰; born 24th July 1940) retired as chairman of HSBC Holdings plc on 26 May 2006, after spending 45 years with the bank. He took up the position of Chairman of Vodafone in July 2006.
[edit] Career
John Bond joined the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation as an International Officer in 1961, at the age of 21, his original application having been turned down before the intervention of the father of an old school friend whose father was a broker for the bank. He spent his early career in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and the Middle East, before returning to Hong Kong to manage the bank's investment banking arm Wardley in the 1980s. From there, he was posted to Buffalo, New York, to head the bank's United States operations (at that time called Marine Midland Bank), before being appointed HSBC Group CEO in 1993. Bond took over as Group Chairman in 1998 with the retirement of Sir William Purves.
On 28 November 2005, HSBC announced that Bond would step down as chairman from May 2006, to be succeeded by the bank's CEO, Stephen Green. It was later announced that Bond would be taking over from Lord MacLaurin as chairman of the British telecommunications company Vodafone.
During Bond's tenure as chairman, HSBC extended its reach well beyond its major franchises in Hong Kong and Britain. From 1998 to 2005, HSBC spent $47bn on acquisitions, including those of Republic National Bank, Credit Commercial de France, Bital Bank, Bank of Bermuda, and Household International.
Bond led HSBC to devoting considerable resources to corporate social responsibility, recognising the bank's responsibilities to the environment and the communities in which it operates. He is also behind HSBC's strong interest in the demographic changes being wrought by an aging world.
His management style is modest, and in interviews Bond prefers to discuss HSBC rather than himself. He has attributed his rise to the top of HSBC as a result of being in the right place at the right time. In an interview in 2005 (below), he noted being driven more by a fear of failure, of letting down shareholders, customers and staff, rather than a sense of personal aggrandisement.
Bond is a Director of the Ford Motor Company. He has been a governor of the English-Speaking Union, and was chairman of the Institute of International Finance from 1998 to 2003.
[edit] Personal information
He was born in Oxford, and educated at Tonbridge School. His family's roots are in Bristol. Bond failed to gain admittance to Oxford University, so on leaving school he spent two years in the USA, one as an English-Speaking Union scholarship student at Cate School, near Santa Barbara, California, before being given passage on a ship from Long Beach to Hong Kong as a desk hand.
Bond has a sister Jilla and is married to Jane, Lady Bond, with whom he has two daughters and a son. His elder daughter Annabelle Bond is the fourth British woman to have climbed Mt Everest, and the fastest woman to scale the Seven Summits.
He was knighted in 1999 for his services to banking.
