HSBC Holdings Share News (HSBA)

Investec has moved its recommendation on banking giant HSBC from 'buy' to 'hold', saying that there is limited upside left in the stock.The shares are trading just 2% below 12-month highs in spite of a "wide assortment of gathering headwinds."Investec said that the first-half results showed a "creditable" cost performance and improving impairments. However, one central issue hasn't changed: "Customer loan growth is anaemic as HSBC struggles to identify sufficient opportunities within risk appetite in its core growth markets of Hong Kong, Rest of Asia-Pacific and the United Kingdom to offset the continuing (accelerated) run-off of legacy or non-strategic assets in North America and elsewhere."Standard Chartered's settlement with New York regulators has reduced the tail risk surrounding the bank and while threats still remain, Nomura has pushed its rating on the stock back up to 'buy'."As investigations are ongoing, there is still uncertainty around the ultimate size of the penalty, but the key threat to STAN was the loss of its banking licence, and we see this risk to be materially lower now."Panmure Gordon has upped its target price for FirstGroup after the West Coast win for the transport group but has maintained its 'hold' recommendation for the stock.The broker has raised its target for the shares from 230p to 280p to reflect the "significant franchise win", however as the shares have risen strongly in recent weeks, the broker thinks that the win has been largely priced in and maintains its neutral stance on the stock.BC