HONG Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp.’s office on Guam will take care of loans given to borrowers based in the CNMI once HSBC closes its office here by the end of the year.
“Their job would be to chase bad loans, including here,” said Guy N de B Priestley, chief executive officer of HSBC’s Guam and Saipan branches.
HSBC may also close its Guam office, but the bank has yet to decide on a definite date, he said. For now, its services will focus on loans.
Priestley said he was scheduled to meet with selected banks on Saipan to make an arrangement on how loan payments to HSBC could be made.
HSBC provided some loans for the newly constructed $6.3 million Tottot Ville subdivision in Koblerville Village, an initiative of Northern Marianas Housing Corp. for the benefit of at least 45 first-time homeowners.
“We have made all the loans that we had agreed to make on that. It’s largely a done deal,” Priestley said.
“What I imagined will happen here is we will ask them to pay to one of the banks here (which) can send the payment electronically to us on Guam,” he said.
Priestley assured borrowers of HSBC that the bank will honor their loan agreements.
“We are here for our customers. We are not going to ask any of our term borrowers to (immediately) pay us back,” he said.
He said HSBC’s future return to Saipan after the closure “is still uncertain” but he would certainly “love that to happen.”
“I would love that to happen and I think it is a possibility. I said it before and I’ll say it again: Saipan has been a very good operation for us. At the end of the first quarter of this year, we were comfortably ahead of our forecast. The government and the people here have been very supportive,” Priestley said.
