I just got around to watching all of the videos from the Journal’s coverage of what went wrong with HSBC’s nearly two-year quest to become a name in the investment banking biz.

Definitely suggest you take the time to watch the three video snippets of John Studzinski and Stuart Gulliver, who were co-heads of HSBC’s investment banking business, as they try to inspire their audience with talk of the hunger that they were going to need to succeed (and if that didn’t work, the ole’ ’some of you aren’t going to be here next year’ line which gets ‘em every time.)

Nothing inherently strange about what they say, but of course with benefit of hindsight it does sound a bit foolish. Now if they had succeeded…

But that’s not fair. It’s not really clear that the grand experiment has completely failed; the article points out a number of missteps, from disincentive plans (guaranteed bonuses???) to blank spots in leveraged finance and research — but the most egregious (in my opinion) being that “Bankers making millions” were living the cubelife.

Select quotes are transcribed below.

Studzinski on what it takes to win:

“People open the newspaper, and say, ’sh’ you know, ‘Shit! We’re not involved in this deal. Why not?’ Because right now we’re not getting that. There has to be an element of urgency, an element of guilt … an element of competition.”

“80 to 90 pecent of … the bonus pool allocation, should be going to people who are sort of the top 10 to 20 percent of the performers. That’s the only way we’re going to get people who on the margin are going to contribute much more.“

Stuart Gulliver on survival:

“Of the people we’ve hired this year … a number of them simply won’t cut it. Having hired 400 or 500 people … probably 5 to 10 percent … will be exiting next year. Because … they’re not performing, either because they’re not integrating into HSBC, or because they’re just not very good.”

Stuart Gulliver on hiring:

“As we noted, there are a number of institutions that are restructuring … so there’s going to be a lot of talented people get shaken loose out of Deutsche, out of CSFB, out of Citi .. that actually, will be quite cheap.

And if you still want to get a job at HSBC — BusinessWeek on HSBC’s “rotational program” (via Dealbook).