HSBC, Barclays on a cost-cutting
In a departure from roaring growth and profit numbers posted last year, two leading British lenders in the country, HSBC and Barclays, are on a cost-cutting spree, involving some retrenchments as they realign their operations.
While HSBC, which had recorded its best ever profit from its India operations last year, denied reports in a section of the media that it has asked as many as 150 people to pack up, Barclays India admitted that it has asked a few people to leave the organisation as part of its operational recast.
When contacted a Barclays spokesperson told PTI, “we have combined the client relationship teams in Barclays corporate and Barclays capital. As a result, the client servicing team will now report to the investment banking head.
The move recognises the close alignment between these two businesses as they focus on serving the needs of the country’s largest companies, MNCs and financial institutions, Barclays spokesperson said.
Jaideep Khanna will lead Barclays India’s corporate and investment banking coverage team from now onwards. As a result of this strategy, there will be a small reduction in the number of corporate coverage and product bankers at Barclays.
The parent Barclays Plc is the second largest lender in Britain with 1.49 trillion pounds in assets, but Barclays India has only nine branches and 40 ATMs. Its total income for last fiscal was Rs 1,808 crore and it employs around 5,000 people in the country.
“However, the people impact is being managed to be kept to the minimum. For those affected by redundancy, they will receive a fair package in context of the market,” the spokesperson said, adding “the realignment will be done in a phased manner over the next two months or so.”
A Barclays source, who wished to stay anonymous, said that the number of people impacted will be one-third of the coverage or client relations team in the corporate banking business, which works out to be around 25 mid-level executives.
Meanwhile, the country’s oldest and second largest MNC lender HSBC India, which had posted an a whopping 82% jump in its annual profit at Rs 3,070 crore million in 2010– the largest earnings in its 145-year operational history here– is also revamping its operations.
“There is no substance to reports that we have asked our people to leave. As part of our revamp process, we did in fact ask those employees in our loan recovery section to find new jobs within the bank, and not leave the organization. We are only re-deploying a section of our staff,” said an HSBC
India spokesperson.
“We regularly re-evaluate our businesses to keep them relevant with current market situations and every effort is made to re-deploy staff to ensure they deliver to the prevailing business needs and avoid retrenchment,” HSBC spokesman added.
When asked what would happen to those who are not being absorbed elsewhere within the bank, the spokesperson said, “we will have to see what to do with them.”
Barclays Corporate includes its NBFC launched in March 2008 called Barclays Finance. It currently has over 50 distribution points. The bank has 2,000 commercial clients, including large corporates, small and medium enterprises and companies looking to grow overseas.
It can be noted that other MNC lenders present in the country like the largest StanChart, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch and Citi have separate investment and corporate banking divisions.
It is learnt that at a meeting with heads of different business verticals in the country late last week, Barclays India managing director and country head Karan Bhagat had released a blueprint for future business in which the bank
would shed some employees, besides downing the shutters on the non-core sectors like retail banking in the country.
The Barclays spokesperson also said the bank is expanding the retail business which is still a priority. “Our retail strategy remains unchanged and we are committed to building the retail business franchise here,” he said.
Over the period, Barclays bad loans rose in the unsecured portfolio on the retail banking side and is now looking for buyers for its credit card business which is on the block after losses mounted. In 2010, its retail NPAs touched around 10% of the total loan book.
According to an RBI’s report, Barclays’ bad assets at Rs 1,422 crore were the second highest among foreign banks in the country after Rs 1,683 crore of HSBC for FY10. Barclays credit cards and personal loans accounted for 91.3% or Rs 1,298-crore of NPAs.
It can be recalled that this May, HSBC global chief executive Stuart Gulliver had said the bank would cut annual costs by USD 3.5 billion by 2013 by moving technology to low-cost countries and trimming staff. HSBC is present in over 87 countries and manages assets worth USD 2.4 trillion globally.
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