NEW YORK CITY — HSBC Holdings has announced plans to exit its U.S. mass-market retail banking business through the sale of 90 of its 148 domestic branches. HSBC will retain 20 to 25 of its existing physical locations in the U.S., which will be repurposed into international wealth centers. These branches will focus exclusively on the banking and wealth management needs of high-net-worth clients. These centers will be located in cities such as New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles and Miami, according to reports by The Wall Street Journal. Citizens Bank has agreed to purchase the company’s mass-market and retail-business-banking operations on the East Coast, which includes 80 branches and approximately 800,000 customers. The company will also purchase HSBC’s online banking portfolio. Together, both portions of the business had a combined total of $9.2 billion in deposits and $2.2 billion worth of outstanding loans at the end of March. Cathay Bank will acquire the company’s mass-market and retail-business-banking operations on the West Coast, which includes 10 branches and approximately 50,000 customers with $1 billion in deposits and $800 million worth of outstanding loans as of the end of March. Both transactions are expected to close by the …
