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No longer feared as "too big to fail", shareholders are weighing whether HSBC is now "too big to succeed", and want to know next week how the bank's bosses propose to increase profitability at a sprawling group beset by huge costs.
Investors believe CEO Stuart Gulliver and Chairman Douglas Flint need to announce bold moves to restore the London-based bank's flagging fortunes at a strategy day on June 9.
While shareholders accept not all their concerns will be answered at the meeting, they say no action can be too big to debate, including a break-up of Europe's largest lender.
"This investor day is potentially a very significant event," said Chris White, head of UK equities at Premier Asset Management, which owns HSBC stock. "The world has moved against them and HSBC has to try to react to that. That is why we could end up seeing some quite radical surgery here."
HSBC largely had a less troubled global crisis than its peers, some of which were bailed out by governments fearing they could drag down the financial system due to their great size.
It needed no such help, partly thanks to its extensive global business which offset heavy losses in the United States and Europe. But it is the expense and difficulty of maintaining this global reach that is now worrying investors.
Tougher banking regulation imposed since the 2008-09 crisis has hurt HSBC deeply. Watchdogs have exposed weak supervisory links between some far-flung operations and the London central command of what once called itself "the world's local bank" to advertise its expertise in a wide range of countries.
HSBC has paid around $8.6 billion in fines for a series of compliance failures. These include allowing money laundering in Mexico and doing business with the likes of Iran, Libya and Sudan in violation of sanctions. Now it faces allegations that its Swiss private banking unit helped clients to dodge tax.
The bill for fines is modest compared with the $14 billion paid by Barclays or no less than $80 billion by Bank of America.
But coupled with low interest rates, the soaring cost of ensuring compliance across more than 70 countries has put profitability and return targets under pressure and raised questions on whether such global reach is worth the expense.
