HSBC has suffered a string of losses from its equity syndicate desk in France since it bought CCF, the French bank it purchased in July last year. The loss demonstrates how hard it has been to integrate CCF, a French national bank, into the British bank.

After bonuses were paid in February, Marc Lombard, who had been head of the syndicate at CCF and at the firm for 15 years, left. Edouard Bustarret, who took over the desk, left one week later and was rapidly followed by Bruno Loeb, who also worked on equity issues.