BlackRock to axe Hong Kong retail sales head’s job among global lay-off of 500 positions

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, will make about 500 jobs, or 3 per cent of its global staff, redundant in the weeks ahead, according to an internal memo to employees.

A single-digit number of positions in Hong Kong will be affected, including the head of retail business held since late 2012 by Julia Lee Siu-lie, according to two people familiar with the matter. Discussions for the employees’ exit are ongoing, they said.

"Market uncertainty is growing, investor preferences are evolving and the ecosystem in which we operate is becoming increasingly complex,” the asset manager’s president and co-founder Rob Kapito said in a company memo seen by the South China Morning Post. “As BlackRock has consistently demonstrated, environments like this also create opportunities for growth as long as we have the discipline to realise them.”

The redundancies follow a terrible year in global stock markets, where 86 of the world’s 94 primary equity indexes had declined. Shanghai’s Composite Index plunged by nearly 24 per cent last year, making it Asia's top loser, while Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng fell by almost 14 per cent.

The market tumult has added pressure on global banks and financial institutions to slash cost, ranging from travel restrictions and expense caps to redundancies.