Chris Hothersall, who was appointed Chief Executive Officer, HSBC Malta in 2002, passed away recently. Marie Benoît recalls interviewing him for the March 2003 issue of First
It is with regret that I read of the death of Chris Hothersall recently. At 51 he was too young to die. I went to interview him for this magazine, in 2003, at HSBC’s main office, an interview which appeared in the March 2003 issue.
He was an Honours graduate in Economics and a long-term career banker within the HSBC Group, having joined the bank in September 1974.
On 9 April, 1975 he arrived in Beirut and “soon the fighting started. The bank was robbed in December of that year. It was gutted. So we swiftly moved to another building. That was my introduction to banking!” Being the junior – he was 21 in those days – he was given the task of taking delivery of all the new safes.
He next moved to Cyprus which was soon followed by an assignment to the United Arab Emirates. He recalled: “The place was called Khorrfakkan. There was nothing down there. It was right on the coast and about 100 miles away from Dubai. It’s a beautiful coastline of course but quite tough. There the Bedouins would walk in and ask to count their money – to make sure it was still there,” he had told me, with a hint of amusement and clearly with some fondness for the place.
Customer care has always been top priority with HSBC, so the Bedouins were mollified and given money to count.
The next posting was Hong Kong where he was head of Money Market Systems at HSBC’s Head Office for nearly three years.
Hong Kong was also the beginning of his love story with Omega his wife, who was working for Cathay Pacific but he explained: “Our first meeting was not on a plane but in downtown Hong Kong.” Omega’s family originally came from South India. She was the last of six children – hence her name Omega, the last.
Chris and Omega were married in 1983 and had two children, Samantha and Mark. Both were born in Hong Kong.
Mr Hothersall’s multi-cultural career took him to other exotic places. There was Bahrain and Amsterdam too, and a stay of three years in Indonesia followed by the Bahamas, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon. Before coming to Malta, where he was appointed CEO in August 2002, following the retirement of outgoing CEO, Tom Robson, his last posting was in India where he was Deputy Chief Executive Officer. “There was a farewell dinner for me before I came to Malta. During the course of conversation I was told by the chap sitting next to me that the new High Commissioner to Malta was to be Vincent Fean. Now I went to school – St Theodore’s Catholic School in Burnley – with Vincent. We hadn’t seen each other for thirty years. It was a relatively small Catholic school so we grew up together and we have common friends.” But their paths had not crossed since their school days. “They nearly crossed but we kept just missing each other: Beirut, Hong Kong – until we both arrived in Malta within months of each other.” So they finally met in Malta and with both of them being supporters of Burnley Football Club they also met in London to watch a Burnley-Fulham match.
I had ended my interview thus: “It is evident that Mr Hothersall has enjoyed the whole adventure of an itinerant banker’s life, which has been made so much easier by the support and adaptability of his wife Omega. I would have thought he is very clever and knows how to turn the less comfortable areas of his life to advantage. And yes, his courtesy conveys the impression that he is a man who does not like rows. It wouldn’t be his way of dealing with problems and difficult personalities.
“I must say, in the short time I spoke to him it seems to me that his is a performance anyone can applaud…”
People are living longer and longer and the average life-span for men in Europe is 76. It must be hard for Chris Hothersall’s family to accept his death out of season, at the age of just 51. I’ve been there and can only say: Some poems are short.