Open to new and existing Premier* customers
Minimum balance of £25,000 or $/€50,000

*To benefit from this offer, you must meet our Premier qualifying criteria of £60,000 or currency equivalent in savings and investments with us.

This offer is available from 20 August to 01 October 2007unless oversubscribed.
This is a special three month fixed term deposit which offers a fixed interest rate of 7% gross p.a. /AER sterling, 6% gross p.a. /AER US dollar and 5% gross p.a. /AER euro.

http://www.offshore.hsbc.com/1/2/internati...20_CAM0_765_A_1

Looks like a certain bank is getting desperate.

I'm not sure I'd do business with them anyway. Last time I opened an account, they insisted on a protracted (and frankly very insecure) exchange of documents by post. When they were finally happy, the fine print in the paperwork turned up enough penalty clauses to make the thing much less attractive.

In this case: £250 penalty for closing the account early. Ouch!

Yup, i had exactly the same issues when i applied for a credit card with hsbc, took forever, sent me a letter asking for ID, when i rang up got put through to a total idiot at a call centre, rang back - another got another idiot....... gave up... had to apply to MBNA to continue my card tarting activities