HSBC Cuts More Top Executives in Strategy Shift
10 December 2019 - 12:09AM
Dow Jones News
By Margot Patrick
HSBC Holdings PLC pruned its top ranks and announced new hires
Monday as part of a strategic revamp, with three of its most senior
executives set to retire or move into other roles.
The British bank confirmed that Samir Assaf, its longtime global
banking and markets chief executive, will leave his job in March
and become chairman of corporate and institutional banking. Mr.
Assaf's deputies, global markets head Georges Elhedery and global
banking chief Greg Guyett, will take over as co-heads of the GBM
unit, one of HSBC's largest by assets. Mr. Assaf has been with the
bank since 2000 and head of GBM since 2011.
Other changes include the departure of a 14-year veteran, Marc
Moses, who is leaving the bank's board and his job as chief risk
officer next month, to be replaced by Pam Kaur, head of wholesale
market and credit risk. The bank said Chief Operating Office Andy
Maguire will give up his role as of January, having helped HSBC
find his replacement, former Hewlett Packard executive John
Hinshaw.
The reshuffle comes after the bank's board ousted CEO John Flint
in August after just 18 months in the role, in what Chairman Mark
Tucker said was a needed leadership change to address worsening
conditions in HSBC's two home markets. Violent antigovernment
protests have rocked Hong Kong, while the U.K. economy is being
tested by uncertainty over its planned exit from the European
Union.
The board installed commercial banking head Noel Quinn as
interim CEO and gave him a broad mandate to restructure the bank.
Mr. Quinn has said he would like the job permanently and is seen by
analysts and investors as likely to continue in the role after a
formal CEO search process is completed. In Mr. Quinn's brief
tenure, the bank has accelerated plans to sell its French retail
bank and is shedding thousands of jobs to lower costs.
HSBC is readying for a fresh phase of restructuring that will
likely see it exit more countries and businesses. In October, Mr.
Quinn said the bank needed to simplify its structure and improve
earnings in its U.K.-based investment bank, as well as in
continental Europe and the U.S. In an interview that month, he said
HSBC would narrow its geographic focus and business mix but that it
still aimed to grow in Asia and other higher-growth markets. HSBC
has operations in 65 countries but makes more than three-quarters
of its profits in Asia.
The revamp comes after extensive restructuring in 2011 and in
2015, which saw HSBC withdraw from around 20 countries and shutter
dozens of businesses. In those reorganizations, HSBC sought to
better integrate and centralize a sprawl of operations that had
formed from two decades of acquisitions.
Its control and oversight of far-flung subsidiaries improved,
according to regulators and ratings firms. But bank executives say
the rejiggering also created additional costs and layers of
bureaucracy that Mr. Quinn and his team are now trying to
flatten.
Write to Margot Patrick at margot.patrick@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 09, 2019 07:54 ET (12:54 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
HSBC (NYSE:HSBC)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2024 to May 2024
HSBC (NYSE:HSBC)
Historical Stock Chart
From May 2023 to May 2024