Lord Stephen Green

Stephen Green, Baron Green of Hurstpierpoint is a British Conservative politician and former Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings plc.  He attended Lancing College and Exeter College, Oxford and received a master’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He began his career with the British Government’s Ministry of Overseas Development. In 1977 he joined McKinsey & Co Inc. management consultants, with whom he undertook assignments in Europe, North America and the Middle East.  He joined The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited in 1982 with responsibility for corporate planning activities, and in 1985 was put in charge of the development of the bank’s global treasury operations. In 1992 he became Group Treasurer of HSBC Holdings plc with responsibility for the HSBC Group’s treasury and capital markets businesses globally.

In March 1998 Green was appointed to the Board of HSBC Holdings plc as Executive Director of Investment Banking and Markets, responsible for the investment banking, private banking and asset management activities of the Group. He assumed additional responsibility for the Group’s corporate banking business in May 2002. His appointment as Group Chief Executive took effect on 1 June 2003. Green oversaw the acquisition and integration of the U.S. consumer-finance group Household International, which represented HSBC’s largest acquisition in a series of acquisitions made in the five years prior to Green’s appointment as chief executive.

In January 2005, Green became Chairman of HSBC Bank plc, the group’s UK clearing bank subsidiary, and Group Executive Chairman in June 2006.

In September 2010, it was announced he would join the UK’s Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition government in early 2011 as the Minister of State for Trade and Investment in an unpaid and unelected capacity.  He stepped down as Group Chairman of HSBC on 3 December 2010 and was replaced by Douglas Flint. To enable him to be accountable to Parliament, he was created a life peer on 16 November 2010 as Baron Green of Hurstpierpoint, of Hurstpierpoint in the County of West Sussex, and was introduced in the House of Lords on 22 November. He became Minister of State for Trade and Investment in both the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 11 January 2011.