Morgan Stanley plans to move about 75 jobs from its operations team in Shanghai to India and Hong Kong as it seeks to improve back-office efficiency, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
The New York-based bank plans to shift a third of the positions to Hong Kong and the rest to India, the person said, asking not to be identified because the matter is not public.
The relocation will result in some job losses in China and the bank will hire in India to make up for those, the person said.
Xu Li (許力), a Beijing-based spokeswoman for Morgan Stanley, confirmed the redeployment and declined to comment further.
The operations team provides back-office support to the firm’s regional businesses. The US bank is looking to concentrate the team in India, its largest offshore operations hub in Asia, and eliminate the smaller center in China. It announced the decision internally in March and plans to complete the redeployment by the end of the year, the person said.
The relocation will not reduce the headcount of the operations team in the region or affect the bank’s technology and data-support group based in Shanghai, the person said.
Meanwhile, the head of Morgan Stanley’s joint venture in China is stepping down, a report published on the Wall Street Journal Web site said yesterday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Morgan Stanley Huaxin Securities Co Ltd (摩根士丹利華鑫證券) chief executive Bao Yi (鮑毅) is leaving the bank to start his own investment firm, the report said.
Bao joined Morgan Stanley in 2006 and moved to the Shanghai-based joint venture in 2011. Morgan Stanley has a 33 percent stake in the joint venture, the report said.
In other news, HSBC Holdings PLC plans to shut almost half of its branches in India and rely more on digital banking to expand its consumer business in the South Asian nation.
The London-based bank is to cut 24 of its 50 branches as it seeks “the right mix of digital versus physical branch distribution,” according to an e-mailed statement on Thursday.
The outlets to be closed account for less than 10 percent of HSBC’s retail customer base in India, the lender said in the statement.
HSBC Holdings chief executive officer Stuart Gulliver is paring back HSBC’s sprawling global network and shutting money-losing businesses to improve earnings hurt by compliance costs.
Since 2011, the bank has slashed more than 87,000 positions, exited at least 80 businesses and reduced its footprint to about 71 countries and territories from 88.
HSBC said it remains committed to India, where it is also shutting its global private-banking operations.
Among HSBC’s foreign competitors in India, Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings Ltd is also pursuing a digital strategy in the country, with the announcement of a mobile-banking initiative last month.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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