By Selena Li and Lawrence White
HONG KONG (Reuters) -HSBC Holdings raised its key performance target on Tuesday as its first-half profit surged more than two-fold, supported by rising interest rates around the world and the planned sale of its French unit.
The bank also announced fresh buybacks of up to $2 billion, which starts immediately.
HSBC raised its near-term return on tangible equity goal, a key performance target, to at least mid-teens for 2023 and 2024, from a previous target of at least 12% from 2023 onwards. It reported return on tangible equity of 9.9% for 2022.
Europe’s largest bank with a market value of $162 billion posted a pretax profit of $21.7 billion for the first six months this year, versus $9.2 billion a year earlier.
The results were better than the $20.9 billion mean average estimate of brokers compiled by HSBC.
The London-headquartered bank said it would pay an…
