Evidence is mounting that China’s bid to be a global banking and finance giant is gaining some traction.

Even bond trading reaches another record on HKEX.

See Bond Connect section below. (Results were 3 days ago)

Link to full results https://share.google/waRctR5Eu9kvpWt3k

Dim Sum bond (offshore RMB-denominated debt) issuance experienced explosive growth after 2022, fueled by a sharp divergence in global monetary policies. Borrowing in offshore Renminbi became significantly cheaper than issuing US Dollar debt, attracting financial institutions, local government financing vehicles (LGFVs), and international corporates. (Gemini)

Key Structural Shift

 Cost Advantage: Lower onshore/offshore RMB yields allowed issuers to save up to 40–150 basis points by raising offshore Yuan compared to USD debt.  

 Foreign Issuer Surge: Multinational corporations (e.g., Nestlé, Chubb), sovereigns (e.g., Indonesia), and multilateral institutions expanded issuance significantly to fund local operations and diversify currency risk.

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These data above confirm earlier Deutsche Bank research the banking and bond industry is taking off in China—-a western bank that 10 days ago became the first authorised by China’s central bank to clear yuan trades.

Still, margins should in theory shrink as regulators toughen their stance in a very mature global market that rips off western customers. Bankers claim to offer magic when they are offering only a utility/commodity.

Detail:

PBOC Renminbi Settlement & Clearing Approval (August 2026):

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) authorized Deutsche Bank to act as a official renminbi settlement/clearing bank in Frankfurt. This grants direct clearing capabilities for cross-border yuan transactions in Europe and integration with China’s CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System).  

 Source: Plataforma Media Coverage

Meanwhile HSBC is cutting bankers, mainly in the west.

ChatGPT on HSBC:

Asia, particularly Hong Kong/China and Singapore, is gaining strategic weight while HSBC is shrinking or exiting selected businesses in Western markets

There are several pieces of evidence:

• Western investment banking: HSBC has shut M&A and equity-capital-markets advisory operations in the US, UK and Europe. The latest FT reporting says 134 senior “material risk takers” left HSBC in 2025 — about 10% of that population. 
• US debt: HSBC cut roughly 10% of its US debt team as part of the restructuring. 
• Australia: HSBC has just agreed to sell its $25.3bn Australian residential mortgage/personal-loan portfolio, while retaining corporate and institutional banking. 
• Singapore: conversely, HSBC announced in July that it would hire 100+ AI specialists and 100 wealth managers and establish a new AI centre there. 
• China/Asia: HSBC continues to position China and Asian trade, wealth management and wholesale banking as core areas of growth. Its own 2026 outlook explicitly puts China technology/manufacturing and the broader Asian AI investment cycle at the centre of its strategy. 

So I think your instinct is right, but there’s an important nuance:

HSBC isn’t simply “moving jobs from Britain to China.”

It’s reallocating capital and senior talent towards businesses where it thinks it has a structural advantage — especially Asian wealth management, transaction banking, trade finance and China/Greater China — while stripping out lower-return businesses and duplicated infrastructure elsewhere.

And this is particularly interesting in bonds. HSBC has historically had an unusually strong position in Asian fixed income because of its Hong Kong/China franchise.

If you’re thinking about the ADT/bond-market question you asked immediately before this, I suspect there’s a particular HSBC restructuring story you’re getting at.

I dug specifically into HSBC’s fixed-income business, and the picture is actually quite striking.

The short version

HSBC is not abandoning bonds in the West. It is concentrating its fixed-income franchise around areas where it has a structural advantage — particularly Asia — while cutting parts of the Western investment bank that it regards as less strategically valuable.

And the latest numbers support that interpretation.

The really interesting bit: debt

HSBC’s own 2Q 2026 results say Debt & Equity Markets revenue increased, alongside Wholesale Transaction Banking. 

And there is an unusually strong external signal right now: Asia-Pacific bond issuance is booming. Foreign issuers have been piling into Australian-dollar, Hong Kong-dollar and renminbi markets. HSBC’s own head of Asia-Pacific debt syndicate told Reuters that these markets have reached a point where they are becoming “significantly more meaningful” to international issuers. 

That is exactly the sort of market in which HSBC has a natural advantage.

Meanwhile, look at what HSBC is actually cutting

HSBC’s 2025 restructuring included the closure of its M&A and equity-capital-markets advisory businesses in the US, UK and Europe. The bank subsequently eliminated 134 senior “material risk takers” — about 10% of the entire population — at a severance cost of $67.5m. 

That’s important because it tells us something about the strategy: the cuts aren’t indiscriminate cuts to investment banking. They’re disproportionately aimed at activities HSBC doesn’t think justify the capital and organisational complexity.

And HSBC’s own accounts explicitly say it intends to redeploy roughly $1.8bn of costs saved from non-strategic activities into areas of competitive advantage and higher returns. 

And where is the “competitive advantage”?

Hong Kong is the clearest answer.

HSBC completed the privatisation of Hang Seng Bank in January 2026 and says it expects about $0.5bn of revenue and cost synergies from the two Hong Kong brands by 2028. It also says it intends to reinvest those savings in areas of competitive advantage. 

So you get a pretty coherent picture:

West
→ simplify
→ exit M&A/ECM
→ reduce expensive senior infrastructure
→ cut selected debt/markets staff
→ dispose of non-core retail businesses

Asia/Hong Kong
→ strengthen the home-market franchise
→ deepen China/Hong Kong connectivity
→ grow transaction banking
→ grow wealth
→ exploit expanding Asian debt markets
→ integrate Hang Seng

And HSBC is simultaneously targeting 17%+ RoTE from 2026–28, so this isn’t simply defensive cost-cutting. 

Which brings us back to your ADT (average daily trade) question

If you saw ADT in an HSBC bond context, I suspect you’re looking at something connected with debt trading / debt syndication / average daily trading, rather than a generic bank restructuring metric.

And there’s a potentially important story here:

HSBC’s Asian debt franchise could become more valuable precisely as its Western fixed-income operation is being rationalised.

Notes

If you’re asking how big HKEX is as a financial-market ecosystem, it is much bigger and more strategically important than simply “Hong Kong’s stock exchange.”

HKEX at a glance

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing operates:

• Stock Exchange of Hong Kong — equities, ETFs, warrants, CBBCs and debt securities.
• Hong Kong Futures Exchange — equity-index, currency and other derivatives.
• Hong Kong Securities Clearing Company — clearing/settlement.
• LME — the London Metal Exchange, which HKEX owns.
• Stock Connect — links Hong Kong with Shanghai and Shenzhen.
• Bond Connect — the principal international gateway into China’s onshore bond market.

The scale

At the end of June 2026, HKEX had:

• 2,748 listed companies
• HK$43.3 trillion of equity-market capitalisation
• HK$283bn average daily securities turnover in H1 2026
• HK$210bn of IPO proceeds in H1 alone — almost double the comparable 2025 figure. 

2025 was already an extraordinary year: HK$249.8bn average daily turnover, up 90% year-on-year, and HK$285.8bn raised through IPOs, up 225%. 

But the really important part for your HSBC question is the China connectivity.

HKEX is effectively China’s international capital-market gateway

Stock Connect generated enormous flows in 2025:

Shanghai ↔ Hong Kong

• Northbound: RMB23.9tn total trading
• Southbound: HK$17.8tn

Shenzhen ↔ Hong Kong

• Northbound: RMB26.4tn
• Southbound: HK$10.9tn 

And by the end of 2025, international investors held around RMB2.6tn of mainland A-shares through Stock Connect. 

Now the bond bit — which is especially relevant to HSBC

This is where I think your previous question gets interesting.

Bond Connect has become a huge piece of the infrastructure connecting international investors to China’s domestic bond market.

In 2025, Northbound Bond Connect trading was close to RMB10tn, with 839 overseas institutions registered. 

And HKEX isn’t treating this as an incidental business. It explicitly said in its 2025 review that it was making “strategic investment to build a vibrant fixed-income and currencies (FIC) ecosystem in Hong Kong.” 

That’s a very important clue.

So think of HKEX this way

London Stock Exchange: principally a global securities market.

HKEX:
Hong Kong securities market + China’s international equity gateway + China’s international bond gateway + RMB ecosystem + derivatives + LME.

That makes Hong Kong extraordinarily valuable to a bank such as HSBC.

And it helps explain the restructuring you’re asking about: HSBC doesn’t necessarily need to be the dominant Western investment bank if it can be disproportionately important in the financial plumbing between China/Asia and international capital.

In fact, HKEX says that since Bond Connect launched in 2017, international investors’ holdings of onshore Chinese bonds have increased by US$490bn. 

That is the strategic opportunity HSBC is sitting on top of.