HSBC drops plan for pay freeze
12 Feb 2016
Europe's largest lender, HSBC, has dropped plans to freeze pay this year, chief executive Stuart Gulliver, Reuters reported citing a memo it said it had seen.
The move, reverses a cost-cutting decision made less than two weeks ago.
In the memo Gulliver expressed caution on the outlook for the lender's revenues this year.
It comes at a significant time, days before HSBC's board was set to meet to discuss whether the bank would move its headquarters to Hong Kong or stay in London.
The memo dated 11 February and addressed to all employees said, pay increases would be funded from a bonus pool originally intended for payments to be made in 2017.
A hiring freeze introduced in the fourth quarter of 2015 would remain in place. The bank, which counted over 266,000 staff at the end of 2014, planned annual cost savings of up to $5 billion by 2017.
''As flagged in our Investor Update we have targeted significant cost reductions by the end of 2017,'' a spokeswoman for HSBC said in a statement.
Gulliver said that following feedback on the pay freeze and the way it was communicated, he had ''decided to change the way these cost savings are to be achieved''.
