It's worth nothing. The bank's in debt up to it's eyeballs. The "trick" is that they just bought the world's biggest fixer-upper and it's still going to take a lot of money and time to get any actual value out of it. I suspect some very high profile people were talking and worked this out as a way of salvaging the holdings of very well connected people. If HSBC is any sort of intelligent, they'll repackage all of those toxic assets and try to resell them in a few months once the firestorm slows down. They'll be back to business as usual. In the meantime, this is a very dangerous position for them to take, and that's why it cost them 1 pound.
It's worth nothing. The bank's in debt up to it's eyeballs. The "trick" is that they just bought the world's biggest fixer-upper and it's still going to take a lot of money and time to get any actual value out of it. I suspect some very high profile people were talking and worked this out as a way of salvaging the holdings of very well connected people. If HSBC is any sort of intelligent, they'll repackage all of those toxic assets and try to resell them in a few months once the firestorm slows down. They'll be back to business as usual. In the meantime, this is a very dangerous position for them to take, and that's why it cost them 1 pound.