HSBC: losing weight is hard Now for the hard part. Shedding up to $55bn in risk-weighted assets in the past year sounds impressive. Yet every dieter knows the first pounds are the easiest, once the resolve has been found. The tough bit is pushing ahead after the glow from the initial "you've lost weight" comments fades. So too with HSBC. Praise is due for a good start. The bank had been for years like a podgy desk-bound banker aware that he should do something about his expanding girth, but too busy to get around to it. Stuart Gulliver, chief executive, has changed that: 28 disposals netting $6bn, let alone the offloaded RWAs, are the proof. And like a good diet guru, Mr Gulliver is tenacious. His strategy was drawn up before the eurozone crisis flared up again last year yet he is not wavering on targets, even if he acknowledges that the bank will need help from an improving environment to meet them. Low interest rates have killed returns on its $1.2tn of deposits for example. Bank investors may lick their lips at the prospective cash from those when interest rates rise, but that is for a still-distant tomorrow. In the here-and now, more flab must be fought alongside the focus on emerging markets. The management is already presenting data for "growth HSBC" - the bank after all the changes. This mythical entity produced a return on RWA of 2.2 times, or nearly half as good again as the actual bank did, last year. Yet investors should not get ahead of themselves. HSBC's shares relative to book value suggest they are not. At almost book value (0.97 times), the bank sits neatly between the European average (0.6 times) and that of Asian banks (1.3 times). That seems about right. Inside every flabby bank is a lean, trading, relationship-building machine just waiting to get out. Not all of them manage it. This one really could, but it has not fully done so yet.