British multinational investment bank HSBC is planning to lay off up to 10,000 employees globally in a second wave of job cuts to decrease costs across the banking group.

The job cuts will reportedly come on top of around 4,000 layoffs that the bank announced in August to address a challenging global environment. HSBC currently employs about 238,000 people worldwide.

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The cuts, which will focus mainly on high-paid roles, will form part of a fresh cost-cutting drive by HSBC’s new interim chief executive Noel Quinn, who replaced John Flint.

Flint stepped down after just 18 months in the role. He was promoted to the role in February 2018 after working at the bank for 30 years.

The latest cost-cutting drive and job cuts are expected to be announced in the company’s third-quarter results, which are due to be released later this month.

Sources briefed on the matter told the Financial Times, “We’ve known for years that we need to do something about our cost base, the largest component of which is people – now we are finally grasping the nettle.

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“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.”

HSBC serves customers worldwide from offices in 65 countries and territories in Europe, Asia, North America, Latin America, and Middle East and North Africa. The bank had assets of $2,751bn at 30 June 2019.

Apart from HSBC, global banks Barclays and Deutsche Bank recently slashed around 3,000 and 18,000 jobs respectively. Citigroup and Société Générale have also announced job cuts this year.