Standard Chartered’s new chief executive has told staff he plans to cut a quarter of its most senior management positions in a drastic drive to cut costs at the emerging-market lender.
Bill Winters’s plan to cut 1,000 of StanChart’s 4,000 top managers underlines the scale of the overhaul being drawn up to turn round the bank’s deteriorating performance.
Concerns about how hard StanChart will be hit by a slowdown in emerging markets and a slump in commodity prices, two of its core areas of business, have dragged down its shares recently.
But when Mr Winters’s latest memo to staff was leaked on Friday it sent shares in the bank up 5 per cent, extending a rebound that started this week.
The memo told staff that a quarter of managers ranked in its seniority bands one to four would be informed that they are losing their jobs by the end of November. It also said the bank would sell assets and withdraw from underperforming areas of business.
StanChart is preparing for the Bank of England to announce in early December results of its stress tests on UK lenders to examine how they would fare in an emerging-markets crisis.
– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2015)
