While readers were digesting news that HSBC was looking to hire up to 1,000 staff in the Pearl River Delta conurbation, the bank was reportedly sacking 120 jobs from its IT and information department in Hong Kong.
finews.asia reported that Europe’s biggest bank HSBC, domiciled in London, but generating more than half its revenue out of Asia, has prioritised the Pearl River Delta region as a strategic hub of growth and will hire in large numbers to serve the region.
The bank's IT staff in Hong Kong however are not part of that plan.
Employees of the bank’s IT department were told that they were fired shortly after they arrived for work on Monday, according to Francis Fong Po-Kiu, honorary president of the city’s Information Technology Federation, citing an affected staff and federation member, a report in the «South China Morning Post» reported.
The retrenched staff, many of whom have worked for the bank for over a decade, were given three months’ salary as compensation. The redundancies were the highest number of staff cuts at one time from the bank in the past two years.
Disappointment
Profit last year at HSBC was much lower than expected, down 62 percent due to costs from restructuring and the write-down of the value of its private banking activity in Europe.
The bank has been on a cost cutting program across the group and recently announced plans to shutter dozens of branches in the U.K., where the bank said it would cut a further 200 jobs in information technology which are being transferred to India, China and Poland, to save on salaries.
Ongoing Legal And Regulatory Issues
The London based bank also faces a substantial number of ongoing regulatory and tax-related investigations around the world including in the U.S., France, Belgium, Argentina and India, which are conducting investigations and reviews of HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) (HSBC Swiss Private Bank) and other HSBC companies in connection with allegations of tax evasion or tax fraud, money laundering and unlawful cross-border banking solicitation.
HSBC is also cooperating in ongoing investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
As if that was not enough the bank has also received requests for information from various regulatory and law enforcement authorities around the world concerning persons and entities believed to be linked to Mossack Fonseca & Co., which the bank says could be significant.
