HSBC Co-Head Leaves after Less than 2 Years

Matthew Westerman, Goldman Sachs veteran and HSBC Holdings Plc.’s co-head of global banking division, is leaving the after only 18 months of working with the British Bank in hopes of leading an important push in the company’s growth.

His departure is considered another setback to the company’s wavering attempts at breaking into top ranks of global investment banking.

Westerman’s work ethics quickly became known internally to be demanding, which included meetings held before six o’clock in the morning as well as a style that was variously described to be “abrasive” and “direct”.

Stuart Gulliver, HSBC’s chief executive, was the one who hired Westerman. It was no secret that the two had close ties. Westerman’s arrival to the company came as a surprise.

Regardless the previous company he worked for 16 years, Goldman Sachs, was HSBC’s corporate broker and Westerman was also able to work on the bank’s £12.8 billion rights issue in 2009 and other transactions.

Westerman agreed to leave the company after he was ousted for his brash management style which clashed with the more collegiate culture at HSBC. The sources refused to be identified due to the details being private.

Westerman is said to be stepping down from his position by the end of the month. He declined to give any immediate comment.

HSBC’s New Retail CIO

Former Google engineering director, Mike Warriner, was appointed by HSBC as their new chief information officer for retail banking and wealth management digital division.

Warriner will be joining the bank as it decides to pay as much as $2.1 billion to transform its “legacy spaghetti architecture” to a “fit-for-digital business” platform. He will be focusing on setting the bank’s retail IT agenda.

“My focus has always been on the use of technology to delight users, whether a multi-player adventure game I wrote at school or more recently the complete re-write of Google’s main publisher advertising system," Warriner stated.

He then added, “HSBC is an amazing brand, has great products and a highly capable global technology team. But even the strongest can’t sit still and the market is moving rapidly with new entrants taking advantage of mobile, artificial intelligence, chat bots and agile development.”

Warriner will be working with HSBC following 5 years s with Google, where he was the leader of the search giant’s Engineering site and AdSense Engineering, a time when he was also the acting European Chairman of Google Payments Ltd. Before Google, he worked for 19 years at UK banking tech house Intelligent Environments, rising to the rank of CTO.

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