Gulliver's Swiss Account Opened Via Panama Puzzles Tax Experts
Stuart Gulliver, HSBC Group chief executive officer.
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The decision by Stuart Gulliver, the chief executive officer of HSBC Holdings Plc, to park money in Switzerland through a Panamanian company puzzled lawyers who didn’t see a clear tax benefit from the move.
Gulliver said he set up the account with HSBC’s Swiss unit while living and working in Hong Kong for reasons of confidentiality, so that colleagues wouldn’t be able to see how much he earned. He told reporters on a conference call Monday that he closed that account in 2009.