HSBC reshapes senior team ahead of next CEO's arrival

London

HSBC Holdings Plc has begun to reshape its top management, laying the groundwork for a new direction under its next boss.

The bank is expected to announce the retirement within days of Marc Moses, chief risk officer and board member, said people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be named as the details aren't public. The qualified accountant is likely to be replaced by Pam Kaur, head of wholesale market and credit risk, the people said.

Meanwhile, the London-based firm has decided to split the leadership of its investment bank. Gregory Guyett and Georges Elhedery will jointly run the unit once Samir Assaf steps down in the coming months, said people with knowledge of the matter. Mr Guyett is currently head of global banking, while Mr Elhedery runs HSBC's global markets business.

The departure of Mr Moses would mark the most senior exit from the business since the ouster in August of former chief executive officer John Flint. He was pushed out by chairman Mark Tucker, who said the bank needed a change of leadership to cope with an increasingly complex business environment.

Mr Moses's departure has been in the works since before Mr Flint's, and Ms Kaur has been preparing to replace him for several months, one of the people said.

Mr Flint's replacement, interim chief executive officer Noel Quinn, is reviewing the entire business. Mr Quinn has made a bid to get the top job on a permanent basis and is considered one of the frontrunners for the post. Speaking in an internal video in October, he told staff that he was more than a "caretaker" CEO.

"My mandate is to run the business not just as an interim CEO, but as the CEO of the bank," he said.

A fresh strategy could see HSBC focus more of its resources on Asia, where it reckons it can make a better return on its shareholders' capital. Mr Tucker told employees at an internal meeting in recent months that more than 30 per cent of the bank's capital was generating returns of less than one per cent, according to a briefing note previously reported by Bloom-berg.

Mr Quinn's review is the third undertaken by HSBC in the last decade and the pressure is on the bank to deliver after its stock hit a 12-month low last week. The bank's operations in the US and continental Europe are expected to bear the brunt of the cuts.

The lender has already signalled its intention to offload its French retail unit, which could take as many as 8,000 employees off its payroll. Equities sales and trading in France, Germany, the US and the UK are also likely to be scaled back, people familiar with the situation have said.

The bank is also under scrutiny by the Bank of England, which has warned for two years in a row that it has failed to tackle concerns about how it handles risks, including financial crime and staff conduct.

Speaking to staff on a conference call last month, Mr Assaf said that he considered the warning an emergency, according to remarks recounted to Bloomberg at the time. BLOOMBERG