More jobs at HSBC Malta could be lost, with the company’s executives reportedly revisiting plans to either close or sell off its divisions in the country.

“Executives are also revisiting a long list of small, non-strategic countries including Malta, Bermuda, the Philippines and New Zealand to see if any of those divisions can be sold or closed. Previous efforts to sell were hampered by a lack of buyers acceptable to local regulators,” a Financial Times report claimed.

HSBC had announced its first restructuring plans for Malta in October 2019, cutting 180 members of staff as part of a voluntary retirement scheme. Eight branches also closed down, with the bank moving its focus to digital banking services.

In February, HSBC said it would cut 35,000 global jobs, $4.5 billion in costs and $100 billion of risk-weighted assets by moving its US and European businesses over to Asia, HSBC’s historical heartland and profit centre.

The COVID-19 pandemic made HSBC rethink their plans with profits falling by half. However, the HSBC board are reportedly pressuring executives to push through with plans to “deepen the biggest restructuring in the bank’s 155-year history”.

Its investors were allegedly underwhelmed by the February plans, with its stock price falling 6%, with HSBC shares at their lowest in more than a decade.

“We’ve got to look at where we want to be in five years’ time and get ourselves in position, not incrementally, but top-down,” said one executive.

“We have a fundamental reorganisation to do and we’ve delayed this, as a corporation, for 12 years. We have to bloody well get on and do it . . . but we have to be sensitive to redundancies in this environment,” they added. “As Churchill said, one can’t waste a good crisis.”

Lovin Malta has reached out to HSBC Malta for a comment.

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