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
