HSBC Holdings Share News (HSBA)

Michael Geoghegan is to step down as chief executive of HSBC at the end of the year, according to two people close to the bank's board. He will be replaced by Stuart Gulliver, head of the group's investment bank, the FT reports.At the same time, Douglas Flint will take over as chairman from Stephen Green, who announced a fortnight ago that he will take up a government job in January as the UK trade minister. The double changeover at the head of the global banking group follows a turbulent two weeks of jostling for position among board members, following Mr Green's announcement.The Telegraph adds that the plan still has to be agreed by the HSBC board, which is due to meet in Shanghai next Wednesday. The reshuffle was sparked by Mr Green's decision to join the Government as Trade Minister.The Financial Services Authority has imposed a City-wide gag on regulated firms' communications with the media. In its latest "Market Watch" issued to all City firms, the watchdog warned that their "internal policies should require all initial media enquiries received by a regulated firm's staff to be immediately directed to the firm's media relations team". It continues: "All non-media-relations personnel at regulated firms should be prohibited from directly responding to any initial enquiry from the media, regardless of seniority", the Independent reports.The first independent study of the BP Gulf of Mexico spill has calculated that 4.4m barrels of oil were spilled before the well was capped. Research in US journal Science concluded that the quantity of oil which spilled was enough to fill 700,000 cubic metres. Following an analysis of underwater video images of the leak, they said that about 58,000 barrels of oil escaped per day until a temporary cap was effectively put in place in July, after the explosion on April 22 which killed 11 workers, the Telegraph reports.Next, the UK fashion retailer, has signed a deal with Sears, America's fourth biggest retailer, to sell its clothes online in the US. The UK retailer will provide Sears.com with menswear and womenswear ranges, shoes and accessories. The US chain will be the exclusive seller of Next in the country. In a statement announcing the deal, Sears described Next as "a superstar name in home-shopping", the Telegraph reports.The top of the list of US billionaires is still dominated by dynastic wealth, according to the latest annual survey by Forbes magazine, while 272 of the 400 richest Americans are self-made. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, tops the list once again with a fortune of $54bn, but six of the Top 10 are heirs to company founders from the past, the Independent reports.Growing numbers of patients are choosing private hospitals for their National Health Service operations, latest figures from the Department of Health show.Patients were opting to go to private hospitals, paid for by the NHS, at a rate of 200,000 a year, with the business now worth £400m a year, Bob Ricketts, the department's director of system management, told a conference on Thursday. The numbers "are still climbing and do not show any sign of stopping", he told the London conference run by Laing and Buisson, healthcare analysts, the FT reports.