Major overhaul for HSBC to cut costs

Big changes are coming at HSBC. Europe’s largest bank is to cut back in wealth management and high street banking and may sell its US credit card arm.

It all part of the effort by new boss Stuart Gulliver to cut nearly 2.5 billion euros in costs and revive flagging profits.

Earlier this week, the bank’s results showed a jump in costs dragging quarterly profits down by 14 percent.

“We clearly have a cost problem,” Gulliver said in a presentation to explain his strategic overhaul.

“We’ve added $3 billion (2.09 billion euros) in costs over the last few years with no revenue to show for it,” said the 51-year-old CEO, who took the top job at the start of the year after a damaging boardroom struggle last year.

Gulliver said a lot of the savings will be reinvested in higher growth areas.

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