BRUSSELS: HSBC sneaked out details of a £4 million windfall for 11 executives, including more than £500,000 for under-fire boss Stuart Gulliver.
The scandal hit lender released the details at 4.45pm, when stock market trading had finished and many City workers would have gone home for the weekend.
The awards represent the final tranche of an annual shares bonus awarded in 2012 for their performance the previous year.
Gulliver, who has faced calls to resign from HSBC over the Swiss tax dodging scandal, received 91,298 shares worth £512,000.
The biggest winner was Samir Assaf, the head of its investment bank, who received shares worth almost £1.1million.
The bumper awards came as it emerged French financial prosecutors have requested that HSBC’s Swiss private bank be sent to trial in France for allegedly helping thousands of clients evade taxes. Investigators initially thought that around 3,000 French clients of HSBC’s Swiss unit had dodged tax between 2006-2007, but the number has grown to just under 9,000.
The development means HSBC’s Swiss unit is one step closer to facing a courtroom battle over a scandal which has spread around the world.
