The UK's biggest bank is set to continue with its plans to cut some 35,000 jobs, announced earlier this year.
CEO Noel Quinn, who was appointed in March, announced the plans before the full brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic had hit the UK. In a statement, the bank claimed it would be trying to find other internal jobs for those affected by the restructuring, but also said some redundancies "would be likely", according to the BBC.
HSBC's restructuring programme is set to save some £3.6 billion in the next 18 months, and this wave of job cuts is likely to be one of the major initiatives within the wider project.
Just six weeks ago, at the end of April, the bank released a statement pledging to put the "vast majority" of redundancies on hold given a tough pandemic-related environment for jobseekers, but this grace period appears to be over.
The bank saw its profits tumble by 50 per cent in the weeks and months where the pandemic and lockdown measures were in full flow.
HSBC now employs around 235,000 people across the world, but has been downsizing since the recession in the late 2000s.
It sold off its Brazil operations four years ago, and according to Reuters, was considering an exit from Turkey earlier this year.
The bank did not have an easy start to the last decade, either; in 2012, it paid regulators almost $2 billion after a series of investigations into its money laundering controls, which were deemed to be insufficient.
According to BBC global trade correspondent Dharshini David, the bank's "massive" restructuring programme "relies on pivoting towards Asia".
The bank has also apparently warned that its "provision for bad loans" could rise to be as high as $11 billion in 2020 .
In response to calls for bonus cutbacks from the Bank of England, leadership figures at the bank announced in April that they would be donating significant proportions of their earnings this year to charity.
Mr Quinn said he would donate one-quarter of his basic salary, equivalent to around £160,000, while the CFO Ewan Stevenson announced he would be giving £93,000 and forgoing a bonus of more than £700,000.
The bank's chairman, Mark Tucker, said that he would be giving his entire fee, a figure around £1.5 million, to charity.
