Up to 10,000 jobs across HSBC are under threat as interim chief executive officer Noel Quinn plans to cuts costs.

British multinational bank HSBC is set to embark on its largest cost-cutting exercise in years, and facing the ax are up to 10,000 high-paying roles across the group, the «Financial Times» reported (behind paywall) on Sunday, citing two people close to the matter.

The latest round of job cuts follows the August announcement that the lender would be laying off up to 2 percent of its global workforce (4,754 of 237,865 jobs at that time) as part of the overall group strategy to cut 4 percent of the bank’s wage costs.

 One of the sources said the cost-cutting drive and job cuts could be announced as soon as later this month, when the group announces its third-quarter results.

Asia a Bright Spot

«There’s some very hard modelling going on. We are asking why we have so many people in Europe when we’ve got double-digit returns in parts of Asia,» a source was quoted as saying.

The bank will also continue to hire staff in high-growth regions Asia, where the bank generates 80 percent of its profits, another person said.