A transcript from a key meeting at the firm behind the ill-fated Titan submersible has revealed the CEO said in 2018: “No-one is dying under my watch – period.”

It captures a heated exchange between OceanGate chief Stockton Rush and his former director of marine operations, David Lochridge, plus three other staff.

The log shows Mr Lochridge raised safety concerns, to which Rush responded: “I have no desire to die… I think this is one of the safest things I will ever do.”

The document was released by the US Coast Guard as part of its inquiry into the June 2023 disaster when the sub imploded while journeying to the Titanic shipwreck. All five passengers were killed, including Rush.

OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations following the incident, which led to questions about the submersible’s safety and design.

During two weeks of hearings, investigators are seeking to uncover what led to the tragedy, and to make recommendations to avoid repeat incidents.

The transcript was uploaded to the inquiry website on Friday, but sections of the document were redacted.

The US Coast Guard has now confirmed to BBC News who was speaking in this key exchange during the two-hour meeting.

Mr Lochridge – who gave evidence at the public inquiry last week as a former OceanGate employee – was called to the meeting on 19 January 2018.

He had compiled a “quality inspection report”, which raised serious problems with the sub’s design.

These included concerns about the poor quality of the sub’s hull, which was made of carbon fibre, and issues with the way Titan was being constructed and tested.

He told the inquiry last week: “That meeting turned out to be a two-hour, 10-minute discussion… on my termination and how my disagreements with the organisation, with regards to safety, didn’t matter.”

The 2018 meeting was recorded, and the transcript captures Mr Lochridge saying: “I am addressing what I view as safety concerns, concerns I have mentioned verbally… which have been dismissed by everybody.”

Stockton Rush was recorded replying: “I’ve listened to them, and I have given you my response to them, and you think my response is inadequate.”

Rush went on to say: “Everything I’ve done on this project is people telling me it won’t work – you can’t do that.”

After telling the meeting attendees that he had no desire to die and that he believed his sub was safe, Rush continued by saying: “I’ve got a nice granddaughter. I am going to be around. I understand this kind of risk, and I’m going into it with eyes open and I think this is one of the safest things I will ever do.”

He then added: “I can come up with 50 reasons why we have to call it off and we fail as a company. I’m not dying. No one is dying under my watch – period.”

Mr Lochridge was fired after the meeting and then took his concerns to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha).

But he said the US government agency was slow and failed to act. After increasing pressure from OceanGate’s lawyers, he dropped the case and signed a non-disclosure agreement.

At the end of his evidence to the Titan inquiry last week, he said that if the authorities had properly investigated OceanGate, the tragedy would have been averted.

In other developments related to the case, the US Coast Guard has also released an image of Titan showing how its dome fell off as the submersible was lifted out of the sea following a dive in 2021.

A paying passenger who was on that particular Titan mission described the incident during his own testimony on Friday.

Fred Hagen said: “The force of the platform hitting the deck… it basically sheared off several bolts and they shot off like bullets. And the titanium dome fell off.”

This was one of 118 technical incidents listed by the US Coast Guard with Titan dives to the Titanic that took place before the 2023 disaster.

The public hearings continue this week.

Monday’s evidence comes from OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein, the company’s former engineering director Phil Brooks and Roy Thomas from the American Bureau of Shipping.

1. Crew’s final words: ‘All good here’

Supplied via Reuters/AFP

2. Witness recalls last look at Titan crew: ‘Five people smiling’

American Photo Archive

3. Whistleblower: Tragedy was ‘inevitable’

4. New footage reveals Titan wreckage

Reuters

5. Leading submersible manufacturer: Titan was ‘not ready for primetime’

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“Normally when there are 30 shots in the game, it is the United States with about 25 of ’em. Not today!”

It wasn’t just the ESPN commentator who was shocked.

Heather O’Reilly had scored the game’s final goal, dragging world number ones and two-time champions United States to a 2-2 draw in their opening match at the 2007 Women’s World Cup.

O’Reilly wasn’t surprised by the scoreline though. Or how evenly-fought the game was. She knew it would be tough.

Instead, as the final whistle blew, it was the attitude of the US’s opponents, who saw a chance missed, rather than a point gained, that struck her.

“I remember North Korea seeming disappointed,” says O’Reilly.

“Their body language seemed to say ‘oh my gosh, we were so close to taking down the giant’.”

North Korea is the world’s most isolated country, a state based around the infallibility of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and a deep suspicion of the outside world.

Yet, despite living standards being well behind most other nations, North Korea has been one of the strongest female football nations on the planet.

When they took on the United States in 2007, they were ranked fifth in the world and amid a run of three Asian titles in the space of a decade.

Their record at youth level is even better. In 2016, they won the U20 Women’s World Cup, defeating Spain, the United States and France in the knockout rounds. That same year, their under-17 team also lifted their age-grade World Cup.

“The game in 2007 was challenging, really super hard,” remembers O’Reilly of her meeting with North Korea’s senior side. “It was hard to get the ball off them, they were buzzing around, very quick.”

There was another challenge though, one that was unique to North Korea.

“It was just such a cloud of uncertainty,” says O’Reilly. “The film we had on them was very limited, even by the standard of the times.

“Every time we played North Korea, it was always a mystery.”

The mystery now is, after a doping controversy and a four-year absence from international football, can North Korea’s women be a force once again?

HSBC’s exposure to defaulted commercial property loans in Hong Kong surged almost sixfold to more than $3bn in the first half of this year, underscoring the risks the UK bank faces from a slump in the Chinese territory’s real estate market.

The London-headquartered bank had $3.2bn in “credit impaired” commercial real estate loans to Hong Kong clients as of June 30, up from just $576mn six months earlier, according to its financial report for the first half of this year.

Hong Kong is HSBC’s largest market for commercial real estate lending, accounting for 45 per cent of its exposure, in comparison with 18 per cent for the UK.

The bank’s total global commercial real estate lending was $79bn as of June. The $3.2bn in credit impaired loans made up 9 per cent of HSBC’s total Hong Kong commercial real estate lending.

The leap in defaults is a sign of how the commercial property downturn in Hong Kong, a financial hub that has for years been one of the world’s most expensive real estate markets, has started to hit banks. Prime office rents have fallen more than 35 per cent since 2020, according to commercial property adviser Cushman & Wakefield.

While banks have been under pressure for several years over their exposure to mainland China’s property market, the focus is now shifting to Hong Kong, said David Wong, head of North Asia bank ratings at Fitch.

“We’re a lot more comfortable saying a line has been drawn under [banks’ exposure to] China commercial real estate, versus Hong Kong,” Wong said. “I don’t think we’ve seen the bottom yet.”

Under the bank’s definition, those borrowers have breached the terms of their loan. That can include missing payments but it can also include “non-financial” measures such as the loan-to-value ratio missing an agreed target figure.

Georges Elhedery, who became HSBC’s chief executive in September, said on a call with analysts in early August when he was chief financial officer that the loans were “all performing” even though “a large number” were classed as credit impaired.

However, the bank said “certain borrowers have sought payment deferrals to accommodate debt serviceability challenges” in its financial report for the first half of this year, published on July 31.

HSBC told the Financial Times this week that “a lot” of the borrowers are still paying interest. A spokesperson for the bank declined to provide figures on how many borrowers were paying interest or to offer more detail on Elhedery’s comment.

Standard Chartered, which as with HSBC has more exposure to commercial property lending in Hong Kong than any other region, reported a rise in the proportion of lower-rated borrowers in its most recent earnings, though it did not mark any of the loans as credit impaired.

The lender has cut its unsecured exposure to Hong Kong commercial real estate borrowers by 19 per cent since the end of 2022, it said in filings in July. Standard Chartered declined to comment.

Higher interest rates have put Hong Kong borrowers under pressure at a time when demand for office and retail space has fallen, with China’s economic slowdown and Beijing’s national security crackdown hitting international investor confidence. Tough zero-Covid measures also prompted an exodus of foreign workers during the pandemic.

The HSBC figures show that Hong Kong groups accounted for 45 per cent of the bank’s total credit-impaired commercial real estate lending as of June, up from 13 per cent six months earlier.

Elhedery said on the earnings call that the bank had taken a “probably prudent approach” in reclassifying the loans and was “comfortable and confident in the medium-to-long-term outlook” for Hong Kong’s commercial real estate sector, which would benefit from any rate cuts.

The bank said in its filing that its collateral coverage was strong and “broadly stable” even as valuations fell, and it was making “relatively low” provisions for credit losses on the loans because of high collateralisation.

“I think for those of us living in Hong Kong you can see vacancy rates are higher at this point,” said Ming Lau, the bank’s Asia chief financial officer, on the analyst call. But he said that the loans were structured so that the bank had recourse to “other assets and cash” of the borrowers.

Eleven of Hong Kong’s biggest property developers have written down the value of their investment property portfolios by about $23bn since 2020, according to data compiled by UBS for the Financial Times.

Mark Leung, a property analyst at UBS, said there could be more writedowns for Hong Kong’s developers in the near future. “For offices, rent probably will continue to come down due to the inflated supply issue, and vacancies could edge up,” he said. 

Many of the territory’s property companies are controlled by tycoons and their families. Sun Hung Kai Properties is controlled by the Kwok family, Henderson Land Development by the Lee family, CK Asset by the Li family and New World Development by the Cheng family.

Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis, said that while the developers are expected to remain under pressure, most retained “sound financial positions” and could tap “old money” held by the tycoons and their families.