Standard Chartered said to cut jobs in Dubai

The sales and trading jobs axed in Dubai are said to include four managing director roles.

Standard Chartered cut 11 sales and trading jobs in Dubai, including four managing director roles, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The London-based lender removed Vikrant Bhansali, regional head of institutional sales; Farhan Aziz, head of credit solutions and Jillian Correa, regional head of flow, from their positions, the people said, asking not to be identified because information isn’t public.

Standard Chartered has “acted to reduce management layers at a global level, and as a result, will have up to 25 per cent fewer senior staff,” the bank said in an emailed response to questions on Tuesday. The group’s new structure will be effective from January 1 and “changes are still work in progress, we are not in a position to provide details,” it said.

Standard Chartered this month unveiled 15,000 job losses to help save $2.9 billion by 2018. Chief executive Bill Winters, 54, is seeking to reverse damage caused by predecessor Peter Sands’s revenue-driven expansion across emerging markets, which left the bank saddled with bad loans when commodity prices slumped and economies from China to India cooled.

The bank, which makes most of its earnings in Asia, plans to cut as many as 250 of about 1,000 managing directors, people familiar with the matter said in September. About 50 of those positions will be in the bank’s Middle East and North Africa operations, one of the people said.

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