Hong Kong — HSBC said on Thursday that pretax profit fell 19% to $4.96bn in the first three months of the year. The bank said the drop in reported profit was down to a change in the accounting of the fair value of its debt, while the results from a year ago included proceeds from its Brazil business, which was sold in July 2016. It also posted a 19.5% drop in year-on-year net profit to $3.13bn from $3.89bn in the year-earlier period. However, it said adjusted pretax profit, which excludes one-time items, rose to $5.94bn from $5.3bn a year earlier, with group CE Stuart Gulliver calling it a "good set of results". Gulliver said the figure was boosted by a $1bn share buyback as well as progress on cost-saving. That figure beat estimates of $5.3bn in a survey by Bloomberg News. The results are the first since the banking giant announced the appointment of a new chairperson in March as part of a management overhaul that includes it choosing a new CE, following a massive drop in profits i...
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