HSBC changed its mind about hiring “thousands” of bankers in China. It’s not the first

In 2021, HSBC’s Chinese wealth management chief, Trista Sun, said that the bank intended to hire 3,000 people for its wealth management venture in the country, Pinnacle. That has not come to pass.

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Last week, Reuters reported that HSBC had, in fact, fired Trista Sun. And Pinnacle is rapidly being disassembled, too – in February this year, The Business Times in Singapore reported that 900 of its 2,100 people had either been fired or reassigned. What happened?

It seems that Pinnacle was too expensive. Last October, HSBC began reviewing expenses at Pinnacle. Reuters reported that the bank was probing staff salary structures and whether Pinnacle’s suppliers had inflated their expenses. Clearly, that probe did not return favourable results, and Pinnacle is now on the chopping block. The Business Times said Pinnacle’s fintech arm was under particular strain, and would soon go from 400 people to just a few dozen.

Sun’s departure from HSBC may or may not be related to the Pinnacle probe. However, it seems significant that in April 2025 she was moved from leadership of international wealth and premier banking (IWPB) to a newly invented role as “managing director for strategic projects”. Now she’s leaving altogether and that role will not be replaced after her departure. 

Although HSBC is scaling back aspirations for its digital wealth business in China, the investment bank is still hiring in the country. For example, Fisher Zhou, an ex-Credit Suisse banker has announced his arrival as head of the bank’s Chinese healthcare investment banking team. Zhou was APAC head of healthcare at Credit Suisse until November 2023 and spent nearly two years at medical technology firm Altek Medical. 

HSBC isn’t the first bank to tip its feet in the Chinese pool and find it too cold to swim. Goldman Sachs, for example, earlier this year lost the head of its wealth management joint venture with ICBC, Alex Wang. Bloomberg reported that foreign firms were struggling to gain a foothold in the country’s asset management market.

It’s not just asset management jobs that have been retrenched in China. In 2024, Morgan Stanley and BNP Paribas both cut around 10% of their APAC investment banking headcount as a consequence of poor performance in the Chinese market, and in 2023 UBS and Goldman Sachs did the same. However, this has changed in 2025 as Hong Kong deals have experienced a resurgence. 

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