While I’ve been focused on the Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) debacle, I missed the latest HSBC news stories in the past week. Apparently HSBC has conclusively proven that a bank can step in a rose bush and come out smelling like shit.

Let’s see if I’ve now caught up on the recent HSBC UK news:

HSBC, under the guidance of the Insolvency Exchange (TIX), perpetrates a plan to prevent UK consumers from entering an IVA by establishing completely arbitrary hurdle rates that debtors must jump before they will be allowed to repay their debt. In case anyone asks, TIX says to say that HSBC came up with that strategy on their own but that they accidently decided to “unilaterally agree” with the other TIX clients to limit Insolvency Practitioner fees.

Next HSBC started making massive frenimies with all the university students they worked so hard to capture as customers.  "They've shot themselves in the foot to be quite honest. Why would they want to alienate themselves from graduates who'll be earning high salaries in years to come?", says one student in a BBC interview. Apparently a massive Facebook protest, “Stop The Great HSBC Graduate Rip-Off”, has generated thousands of signatures. Now if those students would also sign the "Treat Customers Fairly" petition, that would be great.

HSBC is also being criticized this week for misleading customers over the cost of foreign ATM withdrawals. While the television adverts proudly proclaimed that customers would not be charged for taking money from foreign cash points, customers were in fact charged a 2.75% exchange rate fee. Oops!

Timberrrrrr. Apparently HSBC forgot to read their own guidelines. While they say they are “Saving Planet Earth” and that they “will not provide facilities and other forms of financial assistance [for] logging operations that are in violation of local or national laws in respect of illegal logging", HSBC was outed by Greenpeace for providing assistance to a company that does just that.

Finally, it looks like the HSBC high interest saving rates are not all they appear to be. HSBC Online Saver's headline rate is 6.25% before tax, but it pays no interest on any of your money for the whole of the month in which you take out cash. Make three withdrawals a year and you lose a quarter of your interest, bringing the rate down to 4.7% before tax or 3.76% after tax. You would think that an account that is advertised to pay 6.25% would actually pay that rate, but then again, I guess HSBC is entitled to its different point of view on that.