A statement issued today by HSBC Group Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver tried to soften the blow for shareholders who might be reading by starting with a claim of revenue growth in Hong Kong and Latin America.

Consider it “burying the lede.” A couple of paragraphs later came the information most were looking for, commentary on $2 billion set aside for costs associated with its  misdeeds and a pledge to overhaul compliance efforts.

HSBC has announced that it will set aside $700 million to cover any fines, settlements or legal fees it might incur following a Congressional investigation that found evidence its U.S. operations aided money laundering activities on behalf of Mexican drug cartels and terrorists. The bank has also earmarked upwards of $1.3 billion for fallout from allegations it improperly sold “payment protection insurance” to customers in the U.K.

Gulliver wrote that the banking giant is “profoundly sorry” for its mistakes.

“With a new strategy and senior leadership team in place since the start of 2011, we are introducing new processes and structures to help us manage risk and ensure more effective compliance in the future,” he wrote. “Under our new strategy, HSBC is now run and managed as a genuinely global firm, making it easier to set, monitor and enforce standards.”

“Our central compliance team, whose role in the past consisted primarily of giving advice, can now control and enforce these standards,” he added. “And we are driving a change in culture so that our conduct matches our values.”

As an example, Gulliver said, HSBC now judges “senior leaders not just on what they achieve but also on how they achieve it.”