Jim Armitage: Flint-hearted investors will sadly prevent Gulliver’s travel

Wanted: world-renowned banker to chair Britain’s second-biggest company.

Must be on the Christmas-card list of every major political leader, central banker and regulator in the world.

Experience running multinational businesses with 235,000 employees a distinct advantage.

Some Mandarin preferable, along with a willingness to get flogged by select committee MPs when duty calls.

You can see why HSBC is not having the easiest time finding a replacement to Douglas Flint in the chairman’s job.

Now, to add to all the existing hurdles, the bank’s near-70% share-price run over the past year has come juddering to a halt with today’s mildly disappointing numbers. Whoever takes the chair — and its £2 million-a-year paycheque — won’t have the glamour of overseeing a bull run like that again.

Rather, the coming decade will see HSBC having to find ways to offset declining global trade from newly protectionist populist governments in the US and Europe.

Thanks to its Asia-focus, HSBC is better placed to win than most, given that trade between countries in that region will increase to fill the gap from US orders. But gains will be harder to find than hitherto.

The market had once expected Flint’s replacement to be announced by the AGM in April. Now, the end of 2017 even looks a stretch, although the bank denies that.

Funny thing is, the only person obviously qualified for the job — the one who ticks all those boxes in the CV criteria — is staring headhunters in the face. He is, of course, the man who’s pushed through $6 billion of cost savings and returned billions to shareholders; chief executive Stuart Gulliver.

For corporate governance reasons, shareholders would go berserk if he got it, of course. It will never happen.

But you have to admit, he could step up tomorrow and probably do a rather good job.

Solomons has key

Intercontinental Hotels Group boss Richard Solomons is used to bankers urging him to do a megadeal. Since Accor’s takeover of Fairmont and Marriott’s Starwood strike, they call for little else.

But he reckons he can grow IHG alone, by both opening new hotels and driving greater numbers of customers through its in-house loyalty programmes.

Any who doubt he’s right should look at today’s numbers: despite terror attacks and wobbly economies, IHG has pumped out profit growth of 10% and a $400 million surprise special dividend.

The message to investors is clear: keep the faith. Ignore the bankers.