It's better to be lucky than good, as the saying goes. During much of his tenure as chief executive of HSBC Holdings, Stuart Gulliver must have ruminated on that adage with alarming frequency.

There have been times since 2011 when Gulliver seemed typecast as an apologist for sins committed before he took over. So chastened had Europe's biggest lender been by the time 2015's Swiss tax evasion scandal erupted that HSBC's 150th anniversary party - replete with 40-foot rice-grain sculptures and a spectacular Hong Kong light-show - was on the brink of being cancelled.