First published in Great Britain in 2015 by

Profile Books Ltd

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Copyright © HSBC Holdings plc 2015

The right of Richard Roberts and David Kynaston to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1998.

All photographs copyright © HSBC Holdings plc 2015, unless otherwise stated in the picture credits on page 726, which for purposes of copyright is an extension of this page.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

eISBN 978 1 84765 897 5

All reasonable efforts have been made to obtain copyright permissions where required. Any omissions and errors of attribution are unintentional and will, if notified in writing to the publisher, be corrected in future printings.

Text illustration of lion’s head by Robert Fresson