HSBC Holdings Plc, Europeâs biggest bank, may sell three of its landmark office buildings, including the Canary Wharf world headquarters in London, to raise cash as it tries to avoid a bailout from the British government. HSBC is gauging interest in its 45-story tower at 8 Canada Square in London, its Fifth Avenue skyscraper in New York, and its Paris offices on the Avenue des Champs Elysees, said Ruth Lavelle, a London-based spokeswoman for HSBC. The Sunday Times of London reported the potential sales earlier today at a combined asking price of 2.7 billion pounds ($3.96 billion). The newspaper didnât include the source of its information and Lavelle, in an e-mail, said she couldnât confirm a price. The London-based bank is seeking to sell at a time when financing for commercial real estate is difficult and values are falling. In New York, transactions dropped 40 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, according to broker Cushman & Wakefield Inc., and U.K. values fell 29 percent in the 12 months through February, Investment Property Databank Ltd. said in a March 13 report. âDespite the challenging environment, the properties can be moved if HSBC is willing to offer attractive lease-back and seller-financing terms to a prospective buyer,â Dan Fasulo, managing director of New York-based research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc., said in an e-mail message. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aBucQ1Prv8E4&refer=home Seems, raising 12.5 billion pounds ($18.4 billion) of stock to boost capital doesn´t suffice...
Even Soros signed up for the latest rights issue . Why would he do that if they had more dead corpses laying around? Not saying Soros is a god or something but shouldnt he be well informed enough to know if HSBC is a zombie bank or not...