HSBC to sell online credit card business
23/10/2007
HSBC is looking to sell Marbles, one of the first online credit card businesses, which it acquired along with Household International in 2003.
Marbles, which has been closed to new business since April, has a portfolio of loans with sterling receivables in the mid-hundreds of millions.
Competition in the credit card sector has made the business uneconomic to promote, but its its discrete portfolio is thought to be easy to sell. Its personal loans can be absorbed by HCF bank, Household’s UK business. A number of hdge funds and private equity firms are reportedly interested in acquiring Marbles.
The move to sell may be part of a general trimming of HCF’s businesses four years after it was acquired, as it follows the sale of the company’s Hamilton insurance units to Aviva.
