Naina Lal Kidwai Appointed as CEO

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India, Thursday, March 23, 2006 -- (Business Wire India)

Naina Lal Kidwai has been appointed as chief executive officer of The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, India and country head of HSBC India. Subject to requisite regulatory approvals, she will take over on 5 May 2006 from Niall S K Booker who is to move to Dubai as Deputy Chairman and CEO of HSBC Bank Middle East.

Ms Kidwai has been Deputy Chief Executive Officer of HSBC in India since June 2004. She joined HSBC in November 2002 as Vice-chairman and Managing Director of HSBC Securities and Capital Markets India Private Limited, prior to which she was Vice-chairman at investment bank JM Morgan Stanley.

Naina Lal Kidwai said: “I am truly excited at the prospect of being given charge of a market that is expected to be one of the main drivers of the HSBC Group’s growth in the coming years. I look forward to building on the firm foundations laid by Niall and to taking advantage of the huge untapped potential that India still offers to banks such as ours.”

Niall Booker commented: “I am glad that in the four years that I have been in India, HSBC has grown into a competitive player in the domestic market, rated as one of the best banks in the country, according to some. We have led the market in certain areas including the cashing out of benefits and the development of a pay for performance culture. We have also increased awareness through our cutting-edge marketing, which has put the customer at the centre of everything we do. I take pride in our diversity initiatives and am delighted to be handing over the operations to someone as talented more and as well respected as Naina, with whom I have had the privilege of working closely over the last few years.”

HSBC in India

The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited in India offers a full range of banking and financial services from its 43 branches in the 22 cities of Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi, Noida, Pune, Trivandrum, Thane, Vadodara,Visakhapatnam and Mysore, and some 150 ATMs across the country. HSBC has a credit card base of over one million customers in India and is one of the leading credit card merchant acquirers in the Indian credit cards industry.

The HSBC Group

The HSBC Group is one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world. The Group has over 9,500 offices in 76 countries and territories in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa, serves over 125 million customers and has assets of US$1,502 billion at 31 December 2005.