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Household International joins the HSBC Group
HSBC acquired Household International on March 28, 2003. The acquisition was controversial: Household International had, in October 2002, settled for $486 million charges of predatory lending by attorneys general in 46 U.S. states. Household International's CEO William Aldinger became the highest-paid director in the United Kingdom, before announcing his departure in February 2005. After its integration with the HSBC Group Household International was merged with a subsidiary company and renamed HSBC Finance Corporation.

In August 2005, HSBC-N.A. announced plans to acquire Metris Companies, Inc. Metris is a credit card issuer to the U.S. middle market segment. The deal closed in early December 2005 and is an all-cash transaction worth close to US$2 billion. HSBC will insert the Metris product line including the American DreamCard (under the Direct Merchants Bank brand) into the HSBC-NA credit card family of products.

HSBC Finance Corporation is a financial services company and a member of the HSBC Group.

It is the sixth-largest issuer of MasterCard and Visa credit cards in the United States. HSBC Finance Corporation was formed from the legal entity that had been known as Household International, and is now is expanding its consumer finance model via the HSBC Group to Brazil, India, Argentina and elsewhere.

HSBC Finance Corporation’s subsidiaries primarily provide middle-market consumers real estate secured loans, auto finance loans, MasterCard and Visa credit card loans, private label credit cards, personal non-credit card loans and specialty insurance products. Major brand names operated include the prime GE Capital Finance, HSBC MasterCard, Union Plus and GM Card offerings, middle market Direct Merchants, HFC, and Beneficial brands, and the sub-prime Orchard Bank and Household cards.

Beneficial and HFC
Operating under the HFC and Beneficial names, HSBC Finance Corporation is the second largest consumer finance company in the United States, with more than 1,300 branches in 46 states. It provides a variety of real estate secured and unsecured loans to primarily non-prime customers, as well as increasing numbers of other product lines such as auto loans and protection policies.

Source: Wikipedia and other public documents

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