HSBC's emerging markets strategy has not gone without criticism, notably from loudmouth shareholder EricKnight of Knight Vinke Asset Management in New York.
EricKnight has, not surprisingly, called it a "catastrophic strategic mistake, " and you can see his point, since it was only five years ago that HSBC was effectively placing a big bet on America's near-insolvent consumers.
Since moving to Knight with business partners Darren Taube and Eric Lichtenstein in June 2009 from French-backed trading firm Newedge, Reggie, as he is known, has pushed Knight to become one of the largest ETF trading firms in the world, rivaling Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.