HSBC decision on the bank’s relocation looms – but redomiciling can have huge long-term consequences that could undermine the move

Skarbek featured in City A.M. this week with a commentary on HSBC’s pending decision on whether or not to redomicile.

In the article Skarbek Associates’ CEO Paul Heugh commented:

There are significant considerations that are often overlooked by multinationals and which threaten to undermine any decision by HSBC to re-domicile.  My concern for HSBC is the organisational disruption that would ripple out from any major move.  You cannot just shift the centre of gravity of an organisation from one side of the world to another and assume it will stand up because the numbers do. There are second and third order effects that are very difficult to account for, for instance the way an organisation passes information, directions and instructions between individuals or departments.

HSBC is a social network, more like a brain than a skeleton, and the relocation of a major global business inevitably severs key nerves and separates the nodes that invisibly connect people, decisions and processes.

They will unknowingly lose vital knowledge assets.

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