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Bloomberg
Standard Chartered Plc is cutting about 10 percent of the staff in its corporate and institutional division as part of a plan announced last year to eliminate 15,000 jobs and improve profitability at the Asia-focused bank, according to a person familiar with the plans.
Staff will be notified of the cuts starting this week, and jobs will be lost in units such as corporate finance and trade financing in offices including Singapore and Hong Kong, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. The unit, which houses the investment bank, has been run by Simon Cooper since April after he was recruited from HSBC Holdings Plc. Reuters reported the cuts earlier.
“We are making our corporate and institutional banking division more efficient,†the bank said in an e-mailed statement. “Removing duplication in roles and managing our costs to protect planned investments in technology and people means that a small number of existing roles will be impacted.â€
A year after Chief Executive Officer Bill Winters unveiled his blueprint to turn around the lender, revenue is still falling across all divisions and the bank has said it’s unlikely to hit profitability targets amid regulatory and economic uncertainty. Winters said performance at the corporate and institutional division needs to improve after revenue fell 7.5 percent in the third quarter, the most of the firm’s four business units. This week’s reductions are part of a program announced last December to help save $2.9 billion by 2018.
The majority of the cuts will come from staff on the banking products side as executives try to eliminate overlaps in client coverage with regional relationship managers, a separate person familiar with the decision said. At the corporate finance business, about 10 to 15 managing directors are leaving in the shakeup, with Singapore the most affected office, said the person.
Standard Chartered had about 84,500 employees at the end of June, down about 1,500 from the same period in 2015. The bank’s staff is split almost evenly between business units and support services, according to its annual report. While it didn’t provide a breakdown of staff per unit, corporate and institutional banking generated almost half of revenue in the first half of 2016.
Separately, Ajay Kanwal, the head of Standard Chartered’s Asean and South Asian operations, left the bank on Monday after failing to disclose past personal investments. In memos to staff this year,
CEO Winters said the bank would take a “zero tolerance†policy on compliance issues after discovering transgressions concerning some employees’ outside business interests, close financial dealings with co-workers and excessive expenses.