Michael Geoghegan, chief executive of HSBC since 2006, was just the person the bank group needed to put at the helm of attempts to tackle its growing bad-debt problem in America.

The Windsor-born executive, who has been with Europe's biggest bank since 1973, had spent 12 years working in North America and South America and for a period chaired HSBC Bank USA.

Before becoming group chief, he had headed HSBC's high street banking operations in the UK and was known to be cool-headed. In 2005 he had shown his mettle when grilled by MPs over bank charges for businesses.

Mr Geoghegan, 54, who is married with two sons, took executive responsibility for wrestling with HSBC's sub-prime woes last year, when its big drive to lend to customers with patchy credit histories forced it to increase its bad-debt provisions.

With Douglas Flint, HSBC's steely Scottish finance director, Mr Geoghegan took charge of the American unit while the bank sought successors to Bobby Mehta and Sandy Derickson, the previous US bank bosses, who had been shown the door.

Although HSBC had to write down $17 billion against exposure to sub-prime mortgage securities, it was praised for addressing its problems swiftly, even by those who had criticised it for splashing out $14.5 billion on Household, the embattled US sub-prime lender.

Mr Geoghegan, who was 20 when he joined the bank, was groomed for a senior job, but was no shoo-in when the elevation of Stephen Green to HSBC chairman left a vacancy for chief executive. The bank has always rewarded its long-standing staffers, but was under pressure to look externally for a new boss.

Mr Geoghegan's CV is peppered with stints working for the bank in locations from Europe to Asia and the Middle East. Time in Brazil, where he was the bank's president and where his contribution to business was recognised by appointment as a CBE, also served him in good stead.