LONDON: Standard Chartered’s new Chief Executive Bill Winters plans to cut up to a quarter of the bank’s most senior staff to reduce costs, according to a memo sent to staff, which is likely to see about 1,000 top jobs go.
Winters said he planned to reduce the number of staff who are graded in bands 1-4 by a quarter, according to an internal memo.
Those bands cover bankers at director level and higher, and include about 4,000 staff.
“Our situation requires decisive and immediate action. Each member of the management team has a mission to drive through improvements in our returns and part of this will be further streamlining of our organization, eliminating management layers and duplication of roles,” Winters told employees of the British bank.
Winters, a former JPMorgan investment bank boss who took over in June, said the bank would also make disposals and cut clients as part of his strategic review.
Disposals would be in areas where the bank was “not differentiated” or an activity or location “was not critical to a core strength.”
Standard Chartered has had a troubled three years, hurt by weakness in many of its key emerging markets, rising losses from bad loans in India, China and on commodities, as well as fines from US regulators and strained relations with shareholders. Its shares have fallen 43 percent since the start of 2014.
“We lost some discipline during that time, leading to our recent problems with loan impairments and relatively high expenses,” Winters said in the memo.
He is expected to outline his plans to investors and staff in November or December.
“We have a clear sense of our direction of travel and the key areas of focus — superior execution, targeted investments, divestment where we are not advantaged and innovation in our product and process design,” he said in the memo.
The bank would tighten its belt through targeted reductions and not across-the-board cuts, he said.
Winters halved Standard Chartered’s dividend in August and said the bank would raise capital from investors if needed. It said at that time it had cut 4,000 staff since the start of the year, to about 88,000.
Winters said his plans were not all about cuts, however, and he had identified areas for investment. He said that to make room for investment, the bank would cut the number of its clients.
