HSBC Holdings Plc is considering the return of some global leaders to the bank’s original hometown, reinforcing Asia’s role as its center of gravity.

A cadre of senior executives is set to relocate in coming months to Hong Kong from HSBC’s Canary Wharf headquarters in London, say people familiar with the plans, as Europe’s biggest bank pares its global ambitions.

Chief executive officer Noel Quinn will begin marketing what’s known internally as the “pivot to Asia” today when he announces 2020 earnings. Moving the trio —Nuno Matos, chief executive of wealth and personal banking, Greg Guyett, co-head of global banking and markets, and Barry O’Byrne, chief executive of global commercial banking — would mean businesses responsible in 2019 for 95 percent of net revenue will be run out of Hong Kong.

The coming reset comes just 12 months after an overhaul that called for cutting 35,000 jobs, about 15 percent of the total, over three years. But chairman Mark Tucker told the Asian Financial Forum conference in January that the pandemic has upended those plans. “Economic realities mean that what we were planning to do in February we need to be even more urgent in doing,” Tucker said.

HSBC will probably report pretax adjusted profits fell to US$11.7 billion in 2020, close to half of 2019, largely driven by soaring bad debt charges amid the pandemic, according to the average of 19 forecasts on the bank’s website.

“The potential at HSBC is from simplification, de-duplication and increased digitization,” said Edward Firth, a banking analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. “That, to me, is the opportunity, rather more than any ‘pivot’ to Asia or some other such strategic reset.”

(SD-Agencies)