HSBC is cutting up to 50,000 jobs in major global restructuring


On Tuesday, British banking giant HSBC said it will cut up to 50,000 jobs, or almost a fifth of its workforce, in a major restructuring that will further shift Europe's largest bank toward the Asian market. Roughly half of the cuts will come from HSBC selling its operations in Turkey and most of its Brazilian assets, and the other half — 22,000 to 25,000 — will come from closing branches and consolidating IT and back-office personnel. At the end of 2014, HSBC had 258,000 full-time employees.
The disclosure to Hong Kong's stock exchange is the latest bid by CEO Stuart Gulliver to make the massive bank more manageable and profitable, seeking to cut costs by $4.5 billion to $5 billion a year by 2017. The plan also includes shrinking HSBC's risk-weighted assets and downsize its investment bank. Some investors had called for steeper cuts. "Slaughtering the staff is not necessarily the solution unless management makes the bank considerably less complex," James Antos, an analyst at Mizuho Securities Asia, tells Reuters.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
-
New York court tosses Trump's $500M fraud fine
Speed Read A divided appeals court threw out a hefty penalty against President Trump for fraudulently inflating his wealth
-
Trump said to seek government stake in Intel
Speed Read The president and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan reportedly discussed the proposal at a recent meeting
-
US to take 15% cut of AI chip sales to China
Speed Read Nvidia and AMD will pay the Trump administration 15% of their revenue from selling artificial intelligence chips to China
-
NFL gets ESPN stake in deal with Disney
Speed Read The deal gives the NFL a 10% stake in Disney's ESPN sports empire and gives ESPN ownership of NFL Network
-
Samsung to make Tesla chips in $16.5B deal
Speed Read Tesla has signed a deal to get its next-generation chips from Samsung
-
FCC greenlights $8B Paramount-Skydance merger
Speed Read The Federal Communications Commission will allow Paramount to merge with the Hollywood studio Skydance
-
Tesla reports plummeting profits
Speed Read The company may soon face more problems with the expiration of federal electric vehicle tax credits
-
Dollar faces historic slump as stocks hit new high
Speed Read While stocks have recovered post-Trump tariffs, the dollar has weakened more than 10% this year