HSBC says first round of job cuts could be announced in weeks

LONDON – The head of HSBC Holdings’ new global wholesale banking division said the lender will seek to wrap up an ongoing restructuring “very quickly” and could announce the first round of job cuts within weeks.

Mr Michael Roberts, chief executive of the British bank’s corporate and institutional banking and head of Western markets, told Bloomberg Television in an interview on Nov 7 that the job losses will be concentrated at the senior level.

He said the restructuring, announced in October by new group CEO Georges Elhedery, will be done in a “thoughtful way”.

“We are very much aware that this is distracting, this is disruptive, so we are going to do this as quickly as possible,” Mr Roberts added. “I’m talking weeks before we announce the first level followed by several other weeks. We’re going to be working very, very quickly.”

Europe’s largest bank has embarked on a sweeping overhaul that combines global commercial and institutional banking operations under Mr Roberts and creates a new international wealth and premier banking business that will be overseen by Mr Barry O’Byrne.

The revamp has been presented as an answer to persistent investor concerns over how HSBC can survive and thrive in a world of falling interest rates where increasingly large regional competitors and growing ranks of fintechs keep chipping away at its customer base. 

Mr Roberts runs HSBC’s business in the US and Americas, having joined five years ago after more than three decades at Citigroup, where he was latterly its chief lending officer.

He will relocate to London from New York in January as part of his new responsibility for rolling out the new wholesale banking model. The process to find a successor for his US role has started, he said.

Mr Elhedery, who has emphasised that the restructuring is more about simplifying the 159-year-old bank’s businesses rather than reducing costs, has previously said that job cuts are “inevitable”.

The former finance chief who took the top job on Sept 2 has told investors that they will have to wait until full-year results in February for more details of the impact of his plans – a timeline that Mr Roberts echoed on Nov 7.

A geographical shake-up is also part of the restructuring that will see HSBC carve out an Eastern regional unit including Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, and a Western market that includes its non-ring-fenced bank in the UK, Europe and the Americas. Hong Kong and the UK will be standalone units. 

Mr Roberts also repeated Mr Elhedery’s insistence that the plans do not signal any intention to consider splitting up the lender – an idea that major investor, China’s Ping An Insurance Group, has previously touted. 

Speaking on Donald Trump’s victory in this week’s US elections, Mr Roberts said the next administration will have to sort through the issue of tariffs, which Trump promised to impose on America’s trading partners during the campaign, and also consider the effects of a potential blowback. 

“There will be retaliatory tariffs,” Mr Roberts said.

“You have to look at what that impact would be on the American economy – it is often negative. So I do think it is easier to say let’s put on tariffs, it’s harder to actually think through them and do so in a way so it is maybe more targeted and productive.” BLOOMBERG