HSBC plans further job cuts: report

HSBC, Europe's largest bank by market value, plans to lay off up to 5,000 employees as part of its cost-cutting efforts, media report said Monday.

If HSBC maintained the recent rate of job cuts, the number would be close to 10,000, according to the Financial Times (FT).

The bank chief executive Stuart Gulliver has set a target to save 1 billion U.S. dollars by 2013. The bank also plans to close or sell eight to 10 HSBC subsidiaries in 2013 or 2014, said the FT report.

Gulliver, taking office in early 2011, has spent the past two years trying to streamline the HSBC's global network of fiefdoms in order to impose greater control from head office in London and to strip out overlaps and inefficiencies.