Is HSBC about to make tens of thousands of layoffs? Sky News thinks so. At next week’s investor presentation, it’s predicting that Stuart Gulliver will announce plans for another 10,000 to 20,000 redundancies, or the removal of up to 8% of the bank’s total workforce by 2017.
The crucial unanswered question is where the cuts will fall. Here, Sky offers little clarification except to say that the predicted reductions don’t include the planned disposal of the Brazilian and Turkish operations. Nor do they include the possible separation of the bank’s UK arm. That leaves the entire rest of the world and every division of the bank to choose from. The Financial Times predicted last month that HSBC would announce thousands of redundancies from its investment banking business on June 9th. That now looks horribly prescient. The only good news is that HSBC’s junior bankers can at least collect higher salaries than previously while they wait.
Separately, Quartz reports on some new research which purports to explain cultures of working extremely long hours. ‘For men in particular, it also has a lot to do with comparing themselves to peers,’ says Quartz. ‘When men don’t work as much as colleagues and friends, they report being unhappy and shift their work schedule to match or better them.’ In this context, working hard is all about working conspicuously – people get higher status from being perceived as a ‘hard worker.’ As a result, if you’re a man whose colleagues are harder working than you are then you are likely to become progressively more unhappy unless you start working conspicuously to match them.
Meanwhile:
Scott Eichel, the global head of asset-backed products and credit trading for Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’s investment bank, left the shrinking unit. (Bloomberg)
Evercore just hired UBS’s Lea Lazaric Calvert as a managing director within its Private Capital Advisory business to work in London. (FinAlternatives)
UBS offered Tom Hayes at counteroffer of $2.5m when Goldman Sachs offered to poach him for $3m, but didn’t pay it when the financial crisis struck. (The Times)
Goldman Sachs has new paternity leave rules: non-primary caregivers will now be offered four weeks of paid leave (instead of two) to bond with their babies. (Business Insider)
Women manage just 2% of assets in the US fund management industry. (Morning Star)
Dick Fuld still denies that he had anything to do with Lehman’s collapse. (BloombergView)
Gary Cohn’s teacher predicted that he might become a truck driver. (Business Insider)
Books that J.P. Morgan suggests you should read on the beach. (WSJ)