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It's probably a question that isn't being asked enough: should multinational corporations divest themselves into smaller regionally or nationally aligned entities better suited to tackle local geopolitical and economic challenges?
Global banking giant HSBC Holdings PLC is under pressure from its largest shareholder to do exactly that. Ping An, the Chinese insurer and HSBC's biggest stockholder, has asked the bank to spin off its Asian business.
The insurer argues that HSBC as an international entity can no longer straddle the East and the West while effectively navigating both regions' increasingly divergent political and economic landscapes.
There's also some speculation that Ping An—and its demands to break up the bank—is just a proxy for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime. We'll let our readers speculate on that; we want to focus the scope of this piece on whether splitting up HSBC, or other multinational corporations doing a similar juggling act, is a good idea....