Stephen Green, Baron Green of Hurstpierpoint

Stephen Keith Green, Baron Green of Hurstpierpoint (born 7 November 1948), is a British politician, former Conservative Minister of State for Trade and Investment, former group chairman of HSBC Holdings plc, and Anglican priest.

Early life and education Stephen Green was born on 7 November 1948 to Dudley Keith Green and Dorothy Rosamund Mary Green (née Wickham). After a private education at Lancing College, near his family home in Brighton, he attended Exeter College, Oxford, obtaining a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) in 1966. Green's parents were active churchgoers and influenced his religious activities both as a young man and later in life; after graduating he spent a year volunteering in the East End of London at a hostel for recovering alcoholics, a move also reputedly influenced by a visit from a Church of England vicar. It was during his time at the hostel that he met Janian Joy, a fellow volunteer, whom he married in 1971.

Career In 1971, Green began his professional life as a civil servant in the British government's Ministry of Overseas Development (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office), where he spent the next six years.

In the year before becoming chief executive, Green earned below £1m; HSBC's annual report for the period showed that none of the company's five top-earning employees was a board member. Green told The Guardian in October 2003: "Plenty of people in this organisation earn more than me. I genuinely don't care. I can hardly be described as lowly paid. Since when was money the be-all and end-all?" Asked by the newspaper's reporter Jill Treanor how he reconciled the organization's high salaries and bonuses with his religious faith, he replied: "Do I personally feel some kind of incompatibility between what I believe and being in financial services markets? I can only say no". Green also oversaw HSBC's acquisition of Household International, a US subprime lender, which was the largest acquisition in a series conducted by HSBC in the five years leading up to his appointment as its chief executive. Subsequent investigations however, confirmed that money laundering had taken place at HSBC for several years throughout Green's tenure as chief executive and chairman, chiefly for the Sinaloa Cartel. Green earned well over £25 million per year at the time. Green's successor as the top of HSBC, Stuart Gulliver, said "between 2004 and 2010, our anti-money laundering controls should have been stronger and more effective and we failed to spot and deal with unacceptable behaviour."

Minister of State for Trade and Investment In September 2010, it was announced that Green would join the UK's Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government in early 2011 as an unpaid Minister of State for Trade and Investment. In order to take up his ministerial position, he stepped down as group chairman of HSBC on 3 December 2010 and was replaced by Douglas Flint. To enable him to be accountable to Parliament, he was created a life peer on 16 November 2010 as Baron Green of Hurstpierpoint, of Hurstpierpoint in the County of West Sussex, and was introduced in the House of Lords on 22 November. He was Minister of State for Trade and Investment in both the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 11 January 2011 until 11 December 2013.

Aftermath After Green's retirement from HSBC, the questions that had begun to be asked about the bank's behaviour under his leadership continued. On 23 July 2012, the US Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a 335-page report setting out HSBC's compliance failures over a ten-year period. In the report, Senate investigators said the bank had bypassed the USA's sanctions against Iran, enabled money laundering by Mexican drug lords (chiefly for the Sinaloa Cartel), Green told Sky News that he had "no case to answer" over the money laundering scandal, saying: "As and when issues were drawn to our attention, as we were seeking to grapple with the issues, we took action. I think we must acknowledge there were some failures of implementation. HSBC has expressed its regret for that. I share that regret."

Defending Green, Lord Oakeshott, a former Treasury spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said: "Stephen Green was a thoughtful banker in holy orders. But if even he couldn't stop these scandals, banks like HSBC and Barclays aren't just too big to fail, they are clearly too big to control". Leslie was unconvinced by Green's reply, in which he had written: "With regards [sic] to the bank's efforts to address its AML (anti-money laundering) and OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) compliance issues, HSBC has expressed its regret that there were failures of implementation in these areas, and I share that regret". Leslie maintained that Green's letter failed to: address the detailed questions about what he knew and when about these very serious issues. As a British Minister, an adviser to George Osborne on banking and a member of the Cabinet committee on banking reform, he is accountable first and foremost to Parliament. He cannot and should not hide behind "continuing discussions between HSBC and the US authorities" as a reason for failing to answer questions. Shortly afterwards, Green failed to attend the House of Lords to answer a Labour question about the affair. The Leader of the House of Lords, Lord Strathclyde, defended Green, saying that his earlier employment with HSBC did not affect his ability to carry out his duties. At the time of the alleged offences Green was the Swiss bank's chairman. BBC presenter Richard Bilton confronted Green, who refused to discuss the issue saying only: "As a matter of principle I will not comment on the business of HSBC past or present". Chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge MP, said: "Either he didn't know and he was asleep at the wheel, or he did know and he was therefore involved in dodgy tax practices. Either way he was the man in charge and I think he has got really important questions to answer". saying that he did not want to damage the effectiveness of the organisation in promoting good governance and doing the right thing.

Other Some of his prior directorships included the Bank of Bermuda Limited, HSBC Mexico, SA and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited. He was also chairman of HSBC Private Banking Holdings (Suisse) SA and HSBC North America Holdings Inc., deputy chairman of HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt AG and was a board member of HSBC France. In 2005 he was appointed a trustee of the British Museum, a position from which he resigned before his appointment as Minister of State. In 2014 he was appointed a trustee of the Natural History Museum by the Prime Minister David Cameron for a period of four years, and was elected chair by the board of trustees from 1 April 2014.

Awards Green was shortlisted for the Grassroot Diplomat Initiative Award in 2015 where he remains in the directory of the Grassroot Diplomat Who's Who publication.

Personal life Green is an ordained priest in the Church of England, having studied theology at Manchester University's Northern Ordination course while in Hong Kong, and he is the author of the book Serving God? Serving Mammon? He has since described the book as "out of print and out of date".

Publications