London, May 30, 2026, 11:22 BST
HSBC Holdings Plc’s shares in London finished Friday at 1,393.60 pence, up 0.91%, with the stock hovering near its high from late May before markets closed for the weekend. The Hong Kong shares settled at HK$145.10, down HK$0.20. New York ADRs ended at $93.74, gaining $0.79, according to the bank’s investor page.
HSBC ended the shortened London trading week up roughly 1.4% from last Friday’s close, according to daily prices. The London Stock Exchange was closed Monday for the Spring Bank Holiday, leaving just four trading sessions. That follows a recovery after HSBC’s early-May selloff.
The stock kept rising on Friday while the FTSE 100 lost 0.2%. UK indexes still managed to post a second monthly gain in a row, with investors buoyed by possible progress toward a U.S.-Iran ceasefire extension and softer expectations for more Bank of England rate hikes, according to Reuters.
HSBC was not alone. Standard Chartered climbed 1.55% Friday while NatWest added 1.56%, both ahead of the FTSE 100, a sign bank shares stayed firm going into the weekend. Barclays also finished higher, gaining 1.22%. The bigger UK banks stayed in positive territory for the session.
Little in the way of new company headlines for HSBC. On Friday, the bank filed two regulatory notices. One gave total voting rights as 17,183,563,842 ordinary shares. The other reported it had issued 3,312 ordinary shares for employee share plans.
Investors kept asking the same question that’s been pushing HSBC’s stock this month: can higher income from rates and wealth really offset credit fears? HSBC said first-quarter profit before tax, excluding notable items, was $10.1 billion, with revenue at $19.1 billion on the same basis. The bank also reported an annualised return on average tangible equity of 18.7% excluding notable items.
HSBC Group CEO Georges Elhedery said the bank is moving forward on its goal of building “a simple, more agile, growing HSBC” and is still confident about the targets laid out in February. The bank raised its 2026 banking net interest income forecast to about $46 billion. Net interest income measures the gap between what banks make on loans and securities and what they pay for deposits and other funding. HSBC
HSBC’s shares got a lift from that strategy earlier this year. Back in February, Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said HSBC had “slimmed down to focus on fewer regions” and aimed more at wealthier customers. He said the plan looked like it was working after solid wealth figures. Reuters
HSBC’s May 5 earnings release caught attention after Reuters said the bank posted a surprise $400 million loss from the downfall of UK mortgage lender Market Financial Solutions. The news raised questions about private credit — lending done outside public bond markets and standard syndicated loans. Chief Financial Officer Pam Kaur told reporters the bank had reviewed its riskiest exposures and found nothing else “comparable” to the loss. Reuters
Citi analysts flagged HSBC’s 18% wealth revenue gain in the quarter, Reuters said, trailing Standard Chartered’s 32%. Barclays took a 228 million pound hit tied to the MFS collapse in the same peer group. HSBC’s valuation is still caught up with more than just rates—it’s tied to Asian wealth performance and how it handles credit, too.
Next week, Elhedery is set for a fireside chat at the Goldman Sachs European Financials Conference on June 3. HSBC’s next big reporting event is lined up for August 4, when it will release interim results for 2026.
Risk is clear here. HSBC bumped up its expected credit losses to about 45 basis points of average gross loans for 2026, above its medium-term target of 30 to 40 basis points. That’s money the bank holds for loans that might go bad. A basis point equals a hundredth of a percentage point. If trouble in private credit grows, or if Middle East worries push inflation and rates back up, the shares could look stretched instead of holding near highs.
