According to a report on the Financial Times, HSBC is looking to axe up to 10,000 jobs in a bid to cut costs.
Similar to news of computer giant HP’s plans to cut 7,000 to 9,000 positions as a part of a 2020 restructuring plan, HSBC’s latest initiative also comes with a change in management.
New interim chief executive Noel Quinn had implemented this plan “days after he was appointed […] following the exit of his predecessor John Flint, who was dismissed in part because he avoided difficult decisions on job cuts”.
According to two people briefed on the plan, this is one of the firm’s “most ambitious attempt to rein in costs in years”.
Said one of them: “We’ve known for years that we need to do something about our cost base, the largest component of which is people — now we are finally grasping the nettle.”
“There’s some very hard modelling going on. We are asking why we have so many people in Europe when we’ve got double-digit returns in parts of Asia.”
High-paid roles in Europe will be most affected by this cost-cutting drive, and any job cuts implemented is “on top of 4,700 redundancies” that HSBC had announced in August this year.
Then, HSBC’s finance director Ewen Stevenson said that the bank “was looking to cut 2% of its [235,000-strong] workforce, mostly from senior roles”.
The cuts are predicted to reduce the bank’s wage bill by 4%.
HSBC employees in Asia might not need to worry, however.
A person familiar with the plan said that this cost-cutting exercise “would not prevent the bank from continuing to hire ‘revenue-generating’ staff in high-growth regions in Asia”.
HSBC has plans to hire “more than 600” for its wealth business in Asia by end of 2022, with “more than half” of that figure being added through this year.