António
Simões, chief executive
of HSBC UK, has credited being gay for helping him land the bank's
top spot.
In 2013, Simões, 39, was named the
country's most influential openly gay executive by the group
OUTstanding
in Business. More recently, Out
at Work named him its top executive to make “a difference for
LGBT people in business.”
In an interview with a
newspaper in his home country of Portugal, Simões said that
being gay had made him “a more authentic person, better to
empathize, and with more emotional intelligence.”
“If I wasn't gay, probably I wouldn't
be CEO of the bank,” the
married banker said.
Simões, who ascended to CEO in 2012,
added that gay people have a “personal duty at the professional
level to come out of the closet.”
“If we want to live in a true
meritocracy, the only thing that should matter is what you can do and
not what you are.”