NEW YORK – HSBC plans to recruit about 50 more bankers at its U.S. commercial bank to lend to start-up companies, mainly in the technology and health care sectors, according to a senior official.
The London-based bank hired about 40 people from Silicon Valley Bank after the latter lender failed a year ago. The innovative banking business at HSBC now stands at around 60 staff and is focused on serving early and mid-sized companies.
“There’s this void in the market and we’re jumping into it,” Wyatt Crowell, head of commercial banking at HSBC, told Reuters in an interview. “It went a lot better than I thought it was going to go, both in terms of deal volume and our win rate on the deals.”
Startup companies usually struggle to get funding from major banks until they grow and become more established. HSBC and JPMorgan are among the lenders that are working together to serve startups as a way to win business over the long term, including initial public offerings, overseas expansion, deals and wealth management.
Crowell said that HSBC has registered about 250 companies as clients for the lending business, closed 35 loan agreements and signed another 30 terms with clients for an average deal of $15 million.
“I believe we have traction in the market and that we punch above our weight a little bit in terms of the scale of this team,” he said. “And that in addition to our desire to take this global is what’s driving the next wave of investment.”