Simon Robertson, the senior independent director of HSBC, has vetoed calls by rebel shareholder Knight Vinke for an outside strategic review and asked it to stop distracting the bank’s management.

At a meeting with Knight Vinke’s founder Eric Knight last night, Mr Robertson is understood to have rejected his criticism of Britain’s biggest bank.

Mr Robertson gave full support to chairman Stephen Green and rejected KV’s suggestion that the chairman should come from outside and be non-executive.

He argued that HSBC was so large and complex that it required a full- time chairman and told Mr Knight that the board was unanimous in its belief that Mr Green was the right man for the job.

He rejected the suggestion that HSBC’s strategy needed reappraising, stating that the current strategy had been agreed by the board at a two-day meeting earlier this year.

He also told KV that its campaign was distracting management, who during the current turmoil needed to be able to concentrate on running the bank and exploiting opportunities.

Mr Robertson, a former Goldman Sachs banker, was accompanied at the meeting by another independent non-executive director Rona Fairhead, chief executive of the Financial Times Group.

KV and fellow investor CalPERS, the pension fund for California state employees, launched an attack on HSBC two weeks ago, suggesting that it had strayed too far from its emerging markets roots and needed to take a fresh look at strategy.

Mr Knight told The Times last night, “We had a cordial and very constructive discussion. That’s all I’m prepared to say now.”

Mr Green, in Hong Kong to address hedge fund managers and other investors, told The Times: “Shareholders have called for a strong focus on Asia and we are strongly focused on our Asian business . . . I have a very strong belief in our Asian franchise.”

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