HSBC Canada Q4 profits fall, despite 141% global increase for 2017

In the face of HSBC's outstanding performance globally, the firm's Canadian branch has stood out as an anomoly, reporting an 18% fall in profits to CAD$206mn in Q4 of 2017.

Europe's biggest bank saw a pre-tax profit of £12.3bn (CAD$21.7bn) last year - a 141% improvement compared to 2016's earnings.

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These earnings have largely come from the success of HSBC's transformational restructing process, carried out over the past few years.

“HSBC is comfortably the second largest dividend payer in the UK, but a long process of restructuring has meant almost no growth in dividends for four years," commented Justin Cooper, CEO of Link Market Services, part of Link Asset Services.

This has come despite three interest rate hikes in Canada since last summer, boosting HSBC Canada's interest income by 12.8% from a year ago.

With this in mind, the performance of Canadian banks is expected to improve throughout 2018 as further interest rate hikes are expected.