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Following the release of investigative reports detailing $2 trillion in suspicions money movements, featured financiers issued statements to inspire calm as share prices tumbled – some to historic lows. So, what say the banks?

Released over the weekend by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the report is centered around bank filings of transactions deemed suspicious to the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Despite representing only 0.02 percent of the 12 million suspicion activity reports filed between 2011 and 2017 alone, the leaked documents obtained by «Buzzfeed» found that over $2 trillion of suspicious money movements were reported between 1999 and 2017.

Within the report, five banks were most often named in the documents: HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered and Bank of New York Mellon.

So how did they respond to the public and what did their share prices look like? finews.asia reviews the aftermath of the «FinCEN Files» release.

HSBC – closed at HKD29.30, 25-year low

Clients named in report (country; charges): Dmytro Firtash (Ukraine; corruption and fraud) Jho Low (Malaysia; corruption); Arkady and Boris Rotenberg (Finland, Russia; corruption and sanctions evasion; Phil Ming Xu (China; fraud).

Initially, HSBC issued a statement noting that «all of the information provided by the ICIJ is historical» and that as of 2012, the bank had «embarked on a multi-year journey to overhaul its ability to combat financial crime across more than 60 jurisdictions» to become a «much safer institution» than before.

But by the end of the day, HSBC made the decision to freeze social media posting until 11 a.m. U.K. time the next day over fears of related «negative reactions».

«Given the current news coverage, a decision has been taken to pause all HSBC proactive social media posts with immediate effect (except for customer responses in banking services), to avoid negative reactions and comments across our channels and content,» according to a «Bloomberg» report citing Tricia Weener, head of marketing for HSBC’s global commercial and investment banking units, in an internal memo.