HSBC wants to hire a few more consultants from McKinsey & Co.

If you're working as a strategy consultant and are feeling a need to sink your teeth into the sort of meaty in-house job that only arrives once in a while when a major international bank decides to pivot its strategy towards Asia, then HSBC would quite like to hear from you.

Having hired McKinsey & Co partner Chirantan Barua as head of group strategy in June 2020, HSBC is now busy bolstering Barua's team with director-level group strategy hires in both London and Hong Kong. 

The new roles will ideally filled by people with a very specific skillset. The perfect candidates will have previous strategy and consulting experience, will know all about Asian markets and financial services, will be transformation specialists, will know all about digital banking, and will understand banks' competitive and regulatory environment. 

They will report to Barua. HSBC doesn't specify that the new hires must come from McKinsey, but this might be the preference. 

HSBC made an investor presentation on the evolution of its global banking and markets strategy on Monday this week. Between the first quarter 2020 and the first quarter 2021, it said it reduced risk weighted assets in the global markets division from $295bn to $255bn, that it cut the cost income ratio from 63% to 59%, and that it increased the return on tangible equity from 6.3% to 12.1%. 

In the same presentation, HSBC said it's investing in "platforms, technology and coverage" (it has a new client interface called SmartService for onboarding), and that it wants to be a leader in transaction banking, fixed income and ESG while growing its investment banking business and expanding the products it offers to wealth clients, among other things. 

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