António Simões is the CEO of global private banking at HSBC and is a member of HSBC’s Group Executive Committee. He is also currently serving as the regional head of Europe for Banco Santander. Prior to this role, he was the CEO over the UK and Europe for HSBC.
As an openly gay man, he has credited his sexuality for his career success, in that he views himself as “a more authentic person, better able to empathise, and with more emotional intelligence.”
“If I wasn’t gay, probably I wouldn’t be CEO of the bank,” he stated, as reported by The Guardian.
An advocate for diversity and inclusion, António has been referred to as the “poster child for diversity in the City” In 2013, he was named as the most influential openly gay executive by OUTstanding in Business and the Diversity Champion of the Year at the European Diversity Awards.
“I recently said at a conference that it is much stranger – and statistically more improbable – that a 39-year-old Portuguese is CEO of HSBC UK than the fact that the CEO of the bank is gay,” he recounted. “It’s never going to happen again in the history of HSBC that a 39-year-old short, bald, Portuguese becomes CEO of the bank but I hope – in fact, I am sure – that we will have a lot more gay CEOs for generations to come.”
Prior to HSBC, he worked for Goldman Sachs and was a partner at McKinsey & Company.
He has been appointed a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and is a founding member of the Conselho da Diáspora Portuguesa (World Portuguese Network), a group of Portuguese citizens who advise the Portuguese presidency while in foreign countries.
Born in Lisbon, he received a bachelor’s from the Nova School of Business & Economics and an MBA from Columbia University in New York City.
Tags: Diversity and Inclusion, finance, LGBTQ+