Mr Madoff, who died in prison in 2021, admitted in 2009 to defrauding thousands of investors of around 65 billion US dollars (£48.8 billion). The UK-headquartered group said in its interim results in July that it provided “custodial, administration and similar services to a number of funds incorporated outside the US whose assets were invested with Madoff Securities”. It added that various HSBC companies had been named as defendants in lawsuits arising out of the Madoff fraud scandal. Herald Fund SPC is a European fund that put money into Madoff investment funds, for which HSBC’s Luxembourg securities arm, HSSL, was the custodian. This would mark a decline from the 8.5 billion US dollars (£6.4 billion) made by the bank over the same period last year.
