HSBC Joins Citigroup, SocGen as Foreign Banks Retrench in Brazil

HSBC Holdings Plc this week became the third foreign retail bank to abandon or scale back in Brazil in the past two years, leaving the South American nation with just two still doing business there.

Citigroup Inc. agreed to sell its credit-card and consumer-finance unit two years ago and Societe General SA decided to close its consumer-finance operation in February. Also giving up on the South American nation: Bank of America Corp., Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA, Italy’s Intesa Sanpaolo SA and France’s Credit Lyonnais SA, which shuttered their Brazil retail banks in the past two decades.