I found the HSBC Shareholders Alliance on Facebook. And in their announcements, the most oldest one, there is form asking for details of shareholders to try to call EGM. I filled my details out. I hope with my nominee shares I can still participate in a shareholder meeting over cancelled dividends.
It seems they are trying to force the payout of dividends that went exdividend, and instead force a cut of management salaries.
Any other HSBC shareholder want to join?
I am a shareholder and I won’t be. I can understand, if one isn’t a long-term holder, why people are upset but the money will be paid out in a special dividend when this is all over. Why do you think it is best for HSBC to pay it out now?
I’m a shareholder. I also agree that the dividend be suspended.
Lets think a bit beyond money. It will likely only help the company anyway.
People like that are exactly what’s wrong with the world. Pretty low…
I’m a shareholder too and HSBC being prudent by not paying the dividend at this moment is the right thing to do. Keep the cash on the balance sheet for when things get worse and then once everything is back to normal they can pay a special dividend.
EasyJet are paying £174m worth of dividends and then asking for state help to keep the business afloat - ridiculous if you ask me…
They are legally obliged to pay out money already promised I believe.
I think that’s a bit unfair. I’m not a HSBC shareholder so I have no skin in the game but, I can understand that pensioners and FIRE shareholders wouldn’t be pleased.
I’m not sure how I feel about BOE forcing dividend cuts on banks either. I’m all for the prudent allocation of capital, sometimes businesses need to cut the dividend. But I don’t agree with BOE/gov forcing this. Surely the banks could assess their liquidity and cut as necessary.
We have learnt from the GFC that no banks cannot make prudent decisions when it comes to capital allocation and risk. The BOE should step in to ensure that these profit making machines give something back to the nation when needed in return for the bailouts in 2008.
I agree, the attitudes and actions then were atrocious. But since then we supposedly have created vast amounts of rules and regulations to curb this, and conduct in banking for the most part has improved significantly due to GFC.
We have stress tested liquidity regulations now. So I don’t think BOE should have forced the banks unless they were found to have breached regulations or BOE had a strong belief that the parameters of the current regulations would be insufficient. The latter might actually be what has occured, in which case I wouldn’t take issue.
Without government regulation, banks would keep nothing as reserve. They know they will be saved by the public whatever happens. This socialising of risk and privatising of gains is 2008 all over again. People seem not to have learned anything from the last financial crisis.
Having worked on stress tests I can attest to the logic being very binary at times and definitely not setting banks up for a crisis like this.
I’m not against regulation, far from it. I don’t think socialising risk is always bad, right now the government is paying furlough salaries and underwriting business loans. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Too big to fail is the problem.
My original point was simply that some people who derive their living income from a stock portfolio exposed to UK banks have got the short end of the stick here. I should add that this is not my situation, I’m still PAYE for my primary income 
Those poor people living off capital gains. We should set up a fund for the rich, they always have to suffer 
I think we just have a misunderstanding @SebReitz. For one I was talking about dividends not capital gains. I also mentioned pensioners. Someone, one who has a BTL portfolio gets a mortgage holiday and there is support to make sure there tenants keep paying. Someone one living off a relatively low amount of dividend income does not have support. Even though this props up the already distorted UK housing market (but that’s a separate issue).
Of course I don’t think the “rich” need support, again it’s unfair of you to just strawman my view as supporting the rich. I just mean that there are unfortunately always people who all through the gaps. In this case, pensioners living on bank exposed dividend portfolios would be one of them. I’ll agree to disagree though.
It doesn’t actually make any difference if you’re a long term holder unless you need the income, if they payout the market cap drops by the amount they payout.
As a shareholder myself, I think cutting the dividend to maintain the balance sheet is the right thing to do (if slightly annoying) at this time. I’m sure dividends will resume pretty quickly once things settle down
I do agree with this though, The bank themselves should be making this decision. HSBC didn’t take a bailout in 2008, If they had I might have a different opinion 
The share price dropped earlier in the year when they announced they were going to do a buyback at that time despite their strong capital position. More recently they went ex-div (and so the share price fell) before then announcing they weren’t going to pay one and it falling further. Largely as a result of large income funds selling as the div is no longer guaranteed.
The £4bn dividend is still within the bank and management reportedly aren’t happy with being forced not pay one, so it looks like there’s upside for a long term investor for when this capital does get returned to shareholders. Short/medium term is hard to predict as well as any Hong Kong downturn impacts!
HSBC can easily support paying the dividend. They are financially very strong and didn’t need rescuing by the govt in the financial crisis either.
However, trying to force HSBC into paying will lead nowhere - all the banks have stopped paying dividends at the request of the regulator - probably partly so that financially weaker banks don’t stand out.
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