Mubasher: HSBC Holdings reiterated its plans to cut jobs, slashing over 4,000 positions, while stating that top executives would be at the centre of the cutbacks.

“We expect this year to have $650 million to $700 million of severance costs; that involves less than 2% of our workforce,” CFO Ewen Stevenson was quoted bt Bloomberg as saying in a call with analysts.

According to the lender’s latest annual report, it had 235,217 employees in December last year.

On a side note, HSBC’s CEO John Flint was removed after 18-month tenure, in a surprise move, which the head of Europe’s biggest bank said it was necessary to ramp up progress on priority areas such as the turnround of its US business operations.

Previously, Flint, who ran London-based HSBC’s retail and wealth management division, was chosen CEO in February last year in the first major decision by chairman Mark Tucker.

HSBC said that its global commercial banking arm’s head Noel Quinn would become the interim chief executive.

At the end of last April, HSBC started to review its costs, which would have resulted in job cuts, with executives weighing cutting hundreds of investment and banking jobs.

The plan was expected to be implemented starting from as soon as mid-June over the year.