Update | BEA headcount shrinks by 10 per cent, as annual profits slump 32pc
Larger of Hong Kong’s two remaining family-run lenders making HK$700m in cost cuts, mostly in the mainland, where its posted a net loss of HK$461m
Bank of East Asia (BEA) cut more than one in ten jobs across its operations in 2016, in an effort to slash costs as its profits shrank.
The larger of Hong Kong’s two remaining family-run lenders posted annual profits of HK$3.83 billion a 32.6 per cent decline on 2015, and not much more than half the HK$6.66 billion it managed in 2014.
It is now one year into a three-year HK$700 million cost cutting programme, roughly two thirds of which will come from its mainland Chinese operations, which posted a net loss of HK$461 million for the year.
In mainland China and Taiwan, the bank reduced its headcount by 696 last year, via a process that deputy chief executive Brian Li Man-bun described as “managed attrition” rather than redundancies.
Li also said that BEA had combined nine sub branches in mainland China 2016 and had sold nine floors of its BEA tower in Beijing.
The merging of branches “is expected to continue in the first quarter of 2017”, Li said.