600 Yorkshire jobs axed as HSBC outsources IT to India, China and Poland

HSBC is shedding one in five of its Sheffield staff

Staff were told today that HSBC is moving 840 internal IT roles out of the UK, including 595 in Sheffield and Tankersley near Barnsley, to other sites around the world by the end of next March.

Around 490 of the affected roles are in Sheffield, with about 105 at the company’s data centre in Tankersley.

The figure represents nearly one in five of HSBC’s 3,200 Sheffield employees.

Last June the bank announced it would cut 8,000 jobs in the UK as part of a £3bn savings drive. It said it intended to move jobs to “low-cost/high-quality” locations.

HSBC is also closing four Sheffield bank branches in the next few months.

Many of the affected IT employees are based at HSBC’s Griffin House offices in Sheffield city centre.

The bank has confirmed it is looking to “consolidate” its office space in Sheffield and was in “advanced discussions” with Sheffield Council about investing in a new building.

John Hackett, chief operating officer of HSBC UK, said: “Sheffield is a key regional hub for HSBC and remains a major centre of excellence for our IT operations.

“We are in advanced discussions with Sheffield City Council about investing in a new office building, and will continue to employ more than 2,700 people in Sheffield after these redundancies.

“We support more than 7,000 business customers in Sheffield, and we recently launched a £850m loan fund for businesses in Yorkshire.”