Standard Chartered cutting 1,000 senior staff in an effort to reduce costs

Standard Chartered plans on cutting 1,000 senior staff in an effort to reduce costs, according to a recent memo sent to employees.

The news was leaked yesterday in an internal email sent by chief executive Bill Winters.

The number of staff graded in bands 1 to 4 will be cut by a quarter. There are around 4,000 staff in those grades, including bankers at director level and higher.

The bank said that it had previously disclosed in July “that there would be further personnel changes to come”.

Earlier this year Winters said that he was preparing a major shake-up of the company. Winters replaced Peter Sands in June and said he wants to simplify the bank with a “new management team and simpler organisational structure”.

“Our situation requires decisive and immediate action,” Winters told staff. “Each member of the management team has a mission to drive through improvements in our returns and part of this will be further streamlining of our organisation.”

Shares in Standard Chartered surged over 5 percent to 786.7p after news of the job cuts went public.

The bank’s operations in emerging markets has become a serious source of concern for investors. The slowdown in Chinese economic growth and plunging commodity markets have driven the bank’s share price down more than 22 percent since July.

“We lost some discipline during that time, leading to our recent problems with loan impairments and relatively high expenses,” Winters said in the memo.

The company recently sold off major assets in Hong Kong, China and Korea. However, its share price is still 42 percent lower than the start of 2014.