Amid Trade War Woes And Brexit, HSBC Holdings Plc (NYSE:HSBC) Under The New CEO Prepares To Lay-Off Senior Executives

Finally, trade war woes, and Brexit is causing a lot of turmoil in the banking sector. HSBC Holdings Plc (NYSE:HSBC) is preparing to lay-off 10,000 employees, mostly at the senior level. It is in addition to the 4,700 job cuts announced two months ago. Noel Quinn, new interim Chief Executive Officer of HSBC, is planning to take the bank to black by cutting jobs.

Employee count to reduce to 238,000

Following the previously announced job cuts and the present lay-offs, the global employee count of the bank would decline to 238,000. The current chief executive officer – John Flint, stepped down in August 2019. He is shy about cutting the jobs decided to step down. According to an interview with Financial Times (FT), the bank said it has to do something to reduce the costs and return the bank to black.

Why several employees in Europe?

HSBC is recording double-digit growth in parts of Asia and why it needs to maintain more employees in Europe. Quinn, who joined the bank in August 2019, took the firm decision to lay-off the highest-paid employees. According to FT, a lot of factors like trade disputes, lower interest rates, and Brexit forced the bank to lay-off employees across the world.

Other banks like Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and Citigroup have removed around 60,000 employees from their roles in 2019.

Deutsche Bank has shown the door to several employees from London to Bangalore in the second week of July 2019. The bank’s HR Department has issued pink slips to several employees, and Monday is the last working day for them. As part of the restructuring activity, it would close down some trading businesses. The staff working in Hong Kong and Sydney equities would be the first to leave the bank. Around 18,000 employees working in the Asia Pacific region in the equities business lost their jobs.

Barclays has removed over 3,000 redundant staff as part of the cost-cutting measures in Q2 2019. Jes Staley, Chief Executive Officer of Barclays, confirmed the news in an earnings call on August 1, 2019.

Citigroup has decided to cut 10% of the workforce in stock trading and fixed income operations across the world in 2019.

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