Scandal hit HSBC has been named the most secretive bank among the UK’s big four high street banks by charity Christian Aid.
RBS took second place and Lloyds came third while Barclays emerged as clearly the most transparent of the four.
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The report, published ahead of the bank’s annual meeting this week, said HSBC is ‘hiding far too much about its global activities’.
Though Christian Aid stressed that it is not suggesting HSBC is doing anything illegal, it said the bank’s lack of clarity makes it difficult to know whether it is paying the right amount of tax in different jurisdictions.
Christian Aid’s comparison of the big four banks is based on their country-by-country reports – legally required publications about their activities in each country in which they operate.
The charity organization commented that HSBC’s current country-by-country report does not live up to its name because most of the 74 countries and territories in which it says it operates are not included.
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By GlobalData"Instead it lumps them all together as ‘other’ and says it had turnover of $5 billion in those places," Christian Aid added.
Commenting on HSBC’s current report, Joseph Stead, Christian Aid’s senior adviser on economic justice, said: "In the wake of the revelations about its subsidiary in Switzerland, HSBC said it had already changed. Our findings suggest that the bank’s instincts remain secretive and that it is still failing to reveal important information which gives vital clues about whether it is paying the right amount of tax in the places where it operates."
"Last year was an opportunity for UK banks to show their commitment to transparency. They could publish the full report they had to prepare for the European Commission, or put out as little information as legally possible," added Mr Stead.
"While Barclays’ transparency is not perfect and the bank has been fairly questioned for some of the figures revealed in its country-by-country report, it is doing far better than most other major companies and deserves credit for that. We look forward to seeing a much fuller report from HSBC later this year."
"HSBC also takes the same approach as Lloyds and includes the UK’s Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man in its figures for the UK, rather than separating them out as both RBS and Barclays do. Again, this further reduces the level of transparency provided by these reports," warned Stead.
HSBC acknowledged that other banks’ country-by-country reports contained more detailed information than its own but it rejected the suggestion that it has been secretive.
The bank said it had a ‘commitment to openness and transparency in tax reporting’ and that its next country-by-country report will contain more detail as required by European law, including figures for profit before tax; public subsidies (of which there will be none to report), and tax paid on profits.
