HSBC Job Cuts Loom as Bank Restructures

By Sinead Cruise

LONDON (Reuters) – Some senior HSBC staff should brace for job cuts after the bank's latest restructuring, Chief Executive Georges Elhedery told staff in a memo seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

"Inevitably some of our colleagues will face redundancies as we streamline duplicative senior roles," Elhedery said in the memo after announcing one of the bank's biggest overhauls in recent years.

The bank on Tuesday said it would merge some operations and split its geographic footprint into East and West, as Elhedery stamps his mark on the Asia-focused lender by trying to strip out overlapping management roles to trim costs.

A spokesperson for the bank confirmed the memo's contents but declined to comment further. The memo was reported earlier by Bloomberg News.

"The leadership team will spend more time with you in the coming days to explain these changes in more detail and to give you the opportunity to ask questions," Elhedery told staff.

HSBC has split up its operations into four business lines, namely UK, Hong Kong, corporate and institutional banking, and wealth banking.

Those changes should "boost accountability for each of the businesses, identifying underperforming areas more clearly," Morningstar analyst Michael Makdad said.

The reorganisation follows a similar one by Barclays earlier this year, which split its business into five units in a move that CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan said would help to make clearer how each was performing.