HSBC slashes 6,100 U.S. jobs, sets huge share sale:

LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC launched Britain's biggest rights issue on Monday, to raise 12.85 billion pounds ($18.3 billion) to help it overcome big losses in the United States and exploit the woes of weaker rivals. Europe's biggest bank said it would shut most of its U.S. consumer lending business, cutting 6,100 jobs, but that it was ready for acquisitions in its traditional stronghold of Asia where many banks are pulling out to focus on their core markets.
HSBC said it would sell 5.1 billion shares at 254 pence each which is a 48 percent discount to Friday's close. Shares in the bank were down 20 percent at 395p by 1111 GMT (6:11 a.m. EST), but they were still comfortably above the 254p issue price. HSBC's Hong Kong-listed shares were suspended.
"It's always difficult for a market that's feeling jittery to absorb 12.5 billion of new stock," said Jane Coffey, head of equities at Royal London Asset Management which is HSBC's 24th largest shareholder according to Thomson Reuters data. "I am not surprised the stock is down but they are doing the right thing and we are going to support the issue."
The stock has halved in value since Lehman Brothers collapsed in September but HSBC's relative resilience to the global financial crisis means it has outperformed European peers which have lost almost two-thirds of their value. Its share price fall ranked it as the world's fourth-biggest bank, just behind JP Morgan Chase, with a market value of just over $70 billion.
Several investors had told Reuters last week they would support a rights issue, and wanted management to act quickly to remove uncertainty hanging over its share price. "The move seems to be timely and gives them greater flexibility and it certainly puts the bank in a better position but the success will be determined by the manner in which the market moves on from here," said one top ten shareholder in HSBC who asked not to be named.
U.S. JOB LOSSES Unlike many global players HSBC reported a profit for 2008 but it still took a hit with a pretax profit of $9.3 billion some 62 percent below the $24.2 billion reported for 2007. The slide in profits was largely the result of a goodwill impairment charge of $10.6 billion in the United States. Excluding the charge, pretax profit fell to $19.9 billion which was ahead of the $19 billion expected by analysts.The bank also cut its dividend for the full year by 29 percent to 64 cents per share and said it would close its troubled U.S. consumer loans business, HFC.