LONDON, March 23 (Reuters) - HSBC is on track to fill 1000
vacancies at the new headquarters of its British retail bank in
Birmingham it said on Thursday, with people hired for nearly 450
of the roles.
The bank's newly separated high street lender HSBC UK is set
to open its headquarters in a 10 storey office block in the city
in the heart of Britain's Midlands region in January 2018.
HSBC has said it will move 1000 jobs from its head office in
London, but reports last year in British newspapers said that an
independent monitor tasked with overseeing the bank criticised
the pace of its progress in filling the roles.
"More than 40 percent of the head office roles we are moving
from London to Birmingham are now accounted for and we're
recruiting internally and externally for the remaining roles,"
Antonio Simoes, Chief Executive of HSBC Bank plc, said.
The bank said 447 of the roles have been accounted for,
through a combination of staff moving from London and new hires
in Birmingham, and more than 2000 staff internally have
registered interest in the remaining jobs.
The creation of HSBC UK is in response to laws set out in
2013 that require British banks to separate high street business
from investment banking in order to protect savers' money.
HSBC has estimated the cost of this "ringfencing" project at
1.5-2 billion pounds, including the construction of the new
headquarters, moving staff and separating and testing HSBC UK's
IT infrastructure and systems.
The bank previously named Ian Stuart as the Chief Executive
of HSBC UK, while former London Stock Exchange Chief Executive
Clara Furse will chair the unit.
($1 = 0.8027 pounds)
(Reporting by Lawrence White; editing by Alexander Smith)