With Brexit negotiations kicking off today HSBC is hoping for an amicable break to minimise job losses in London.
HSBC’s U.K. chief executive Ian Stuart said that the bank may end up cutting less than the 1,000 jobs it has predicted if Britain opts for a soft rather than a hard Brexit.
The bank, which as finews.asia recently reported, is currently targeting selected cleints with a robo-advice offering, has previously warned that some of its larger clients are asking for their business to be moved from the U.K. to offices in mainland Europe or Asia before a final Brexit deal is struck.
Unchartered Waters
The United Kingdom CEO said that the bank, which has around 43,000 employees in the U.K., could cut up to 1,000 jobs, but would be in London for many years to come and was contingency planning for the uncharted waters of how a Brexit deal may look.
«Depending on a hard or soft Brexit that number 1,000 jobs. might be slightly less than that, so it’s going to be updated all the time. We’re still in uncharted waters today and we don’t know exactly how it’s going to look, so we’ve got to plan ahead,» Stuart said to the BBC.
HSBC is also one of a number of banks to have projected job relocations or losses in the wake of Brexit including major Swiss institutions Credit Suisse and UBS.
