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0 offices in 76 countries and territories in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, the America, the Middle East and Africa. It was a pioneer of modern banking practices in a number of countries.

A growth oriented company from it's earliest days, in 2000, HSBC decided to launch concrete strategies to attain market leadership in all sectors it operated in. Though the company was amongst the leading players in areas such as consumer Finance, personal financial services, commercial and corporate banking, it also wanted to establish its presence in areas such as investment banking, mortgage, insurance and credit card business. To strengthen its product portfolio and geographical reach, the company embarked on an aggressive acquisition strategy. The focus was on areas where HSBC was either weak or did not have a presence. Simultaneously, the company launched an aggressive branding exercise to complement its growth strategy. The geographical reach of the bank could be estimated by its presence in form of the subsidiaries and franchises. It has nearly 200,000 shareholders in some 100 countries and territories. The shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American Depositary Receipts. HSBC was also listed on the London, Hong Kong, New York, Paris and Bermuda stock exchanges.

In late 1998, the Group adopted the HSBC brand and the hexagon symbol as a unified brand in all the markets where it operated. The bank adopted the tagline ‘Your world of financial services' in 1999. With the new tagline, HSBC hoped to acquaint customers with the extent and the range of its financial services. The tagline and the unification of the business under one name emphasised the global reach of the group. In early 2000s, HSBC vigorously worked towards developing its banking and financial services to gain market leadership. In 2002, the HSBC changed the tagline to ‘The world's local bank', the tagline emphasised the group's experience and understanding of a great variety of markets and cultures. The group chairman said ‘We are committed to making HSBC one of the world's leading brands for customer experience.'1 as part of the ‘Managing For Value' Strategy

In 1998, HSBC launched the above strategy to set the conditions for future success in a fast-changing market. The company hoped to beat the total shareholder return delivered by competing financial institutions. To do so, it needed to enter areas that promised returns that were higher than the risk-adjusted cost of capital. It decided to offer wealth management services, personal asset management and insurance services to its customers. Its objective was to cross-sell a wide range of products around the globe, including mortgages, insurance, mutual funds, and credit cards.

As a first step, the company decided to eliminate bad growth strategies i.e. those which had failed to cover the cost of capital. As a part of its value-based profitability drive, it adopted several measures which targeted higher-value creation at the bank. Managers and staff adopted behavioural practices such as targeting high-net-worth customers through several prestigious credit card schemes, strengthened the sales culture of staff by ways of incentives and promoting client cross-referral across the different business divisions, running more loyalty programmes for customers to capture a greater share of creditworthy customers. Like some other companies, HSBC has also develo