A year ago, HSBC’s Swiss private bank was still considering Geneva as a growth market. Now it is cutting jobs and reducing its office space in Geneva.
After a bad year for Swiss private bank HSBC in which wealthy clients withdrew a net $1 billion, it is cutting 110 jobs in Switzerland and reducing office space in Geneva, British newspaper Financial Times reported Monday.
Employees at the Quai des Bergues office in Geneva’s city center were informed last Monday that two floors of the building would be closed and more workers would have to share their desks.
The move is part of the bank’s plan to reduce the costs of its office space in the city by around 20 percent over the next few years, making a significant contribution to improving the company’s profitability in Switzerland, according to an internal memo seen by the FT.
The cuts in Switzerland come just a year after HSBC Group said the country was a market it wanted to invest in to grow its wealth management business.
Many of the back- and middle-office functions will be moved to lower-cost locations, such as Poland and Mumbai, according to further reports. The reduction of office space is part of the British HSBC Group’s strategy to radically cut costs; at its headquarters in London, these costs are to be reduced by as much as 40 percent, as finews.ch also reported earlier.
The measures taken in Geneva illustrate the pressure on HSBC’s Swiss private bank, which saw net new money outflows of around $1 billion last year.
The FT suggests the decline was due to some very large clients withdrawing their assets, rather than a decline in the overall number of clients. HSBC will present its 2021 financial statements on February 22, 2022.
HSBC’s spokesman said the job cuts in Geneva would have no impact on the front office, adding the bank plans to continue hiring relationship managers and investment advisors in the coming years.
We remain fully committed to Switzerland,» he told the British newspaper. The Swiss bank will grow its business with clients from Europe, the Middle East and Asia, expand its offering to ultra-high-net-worth clients and continue to hire talent.
