HSBC hits play on 35k jobs cuts during crisis
Banking giant HSBC is to resume its plan to cut around 35,000 jobs worldwide after putting the redundancy programme on hold amid the coronavirus crisis.
In an internal memo to staff, chief executive Noel Quinn said the cuts first announced in February are “even more necessary today” as the group faces “challenging times ahead”. He said the group would also freeze the “vast majority” of external recruitment and look to redeploy affected staff where possible.
Mr Quinn told employees: “We could not pause the job losses indefinitely – it was always a question of ‘not if, but when’.”
Trade union Unite hit out at HSBC for resuming job cuts during the crisis and said it had a duty to “stand by its team now more than ever”.
HSBC announced in February that it was expecting to slash its 235,000-strong workforce to around 200,000 over the next three years as part of a wider restructuring to save £3.6 billion in costs.
It did not give a breakdown of where the jobs would go, but at the time it said there would be “meaningful” cuts in the UK, where the bank employs around 40,000 people.
The group then paused the plans in April.
Mr Quinn said in the memo: “I wish I could say that the next few months will see a return to normality, but that is unlikely to be the case.
“You will have seen that our profits fell in the first quarter and virtually all economic forecasts point to challenging times ahead.” Unite questioned the timing of the decision and vowed to oppose compulsory redundancies.