HSBC Holdings plc (commonly known as HSBC) is a British multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. As of 2011^[update] it was the world's second-largest banking and financial services group and second-largest public company according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine.

HSBC is a universal bank and is organised within four business groups: Commercial Banking; Global Banking and Markets (investment banking); Retail Banking and Wealth Management (retail banking and consumer finance); and Global Private Banking. It has around 7,200 offices in 85 countries and territories across Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America and around 89 million customers. As of 31 March 2012, it had total assets of $2.637 trillion, of which roughly half were in Europe, a quarter in the Americas and a quarter in Asia.

HSBC Holdings plc was founded in London in 1991 by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation to act as a new group holding company and to enable the acquisition of UK-based Midland Bank. The origins of the bank lie in Hong Kong and Shanghai, where branches were first opened in 1865. Today, HSBC remains the largest bank in Hong Kong, and recent expansion in mainland China, where it is now the largest international bank, has returned it to that part of its roots.

Gerry Lester "Bubba" Watson, Jr. (born November 5, 1978) is an American professional golfer on the PGA Tour. One of the few left-handed golfers on tour, he is a major champion, the winner of the Masters Tournament in 2012. Among the longest drivers on the PGA Tour, in 2007 he had an average drive of 315.2 yards (288.2 m) and can hit a ball over 350 yards (320 m), capable of generating a ball speed up to 194 mph (312 km/h)]. Watson won the 2012 Masters Tournament after defeating Louis Oosthuizen in a sudden death playoff. The win elevated Watson to a career-high fourth place in the Official World Golf Ranking.

Watson was born and raised in Bagdad, Florida, near Pensacola. He played on the golf team at Milton High School, which had featured future PGA Tour members Heath Slocum and Boo Weekley just before he attended. Watson played golf for Faulkner State Community College in nearby Baldwin County, Alabama, where he was a junior college All-American. He transferred to the University of Georgia, the defending NCAA champions, and played for the Bulldogs in 2000 and 2001. As a junior, Watson helped lead the Bulldogs to the SEC title in 2000.

Matthew C. "Matt" Taibbi (pronounced /taɪˈiːbi/; born March 2, 1970) is an American author and journalist reporting on politics, media, finance, and sports for Rolling Stone and Men's Journal, often in a polemical style. He has also edited and written for The eXile, the New York Press, and The Beast.

Taibbi grew up in the Boston, Massachusetts suburbs. He attended Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, and Bard College at Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, then spent a year abroad at Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University in Russia. His father is Mike Taibbi, an NBC television reporter.

Taibbi joined Mark Ames in 1997 to co-edit the controversial English-language Moscow-based, bi-weekly free newspaper, The eXile. Of Exile, Taibbi said, "We were out of the reach of American libel law, and we had a situation where we weren’t really accountable to our advertisers. We had total freedom."^{[citation needed]} In the U.S. media, Playboy magazine published pieces on Russia both by Taibbi and by Taibbi and Ames together during this time.