Bill Winters, the new CEO at financial services firm Standard Chartered, has announced a large-scale shake-up of the bank’s upper management.
Though he has only been at the helm of the company for just over a month, Winters announced a slew of organizational changes that he says ‘will improve accountability, speed up decision making, reduce bureaucracy and play a key part in delivering…$1.8 bn of cost savings by the end of 2017’.
Among the announcements made – and later explained in a message to employees from Winters published on Standard Chartered’s website – is the news that Andy Halford, the group’s CFO, will take on responsibility for investor relations alongside his other roles in finance, treasury, strategy and corporate development.
It is not entirely clear what the change means for how the firm’s IR function will continue to operate, nor the role of current head of IR James Hopkinson.
A spokesperson for Standard Chartered has confirmed, however, that the reorganization ‘would not make a material difference to the way IR is run’, nor to Hopkinson’s current role. It is also confirmed that Halford will remain one of the main points of contact for investors and analysts.
Winters was brought in this June after the resignation of Standard Chartered’s last CEO, Peter Sands. The lender has weathered a series of problems in the past two years, including an $800 mn write-down of its Korean unit, widespread job cuts and handing out $60 bn worth of loans to commodities companies being hit by plummeting oil prices.
A new 13-member management team will report directly to Winters, who himself is taking over prime responsibility for all three of the firm’s main divisions instead of deputy CEO Mike Rees. Though Rees will remain at the company, regional heads Viswanathan Shankar and Jaspal Bindra have already departed, while chairman John Peace is set to leave before the end of next year.
