HSBC's Citi execution guy has finished the executing
HSBC's reorg is all but done. Speaking to Bloomberg yesterday, CEO Georges Elhedery said the “heavy lifting” of the reorganization has already occurred. All that remains now is for the bank to cut 20,000 jobs through the deployment of AI.
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Gerry Keefe will not be assisting with these future cuts. Despite being a key execution tool in last year's unexpected HSBC restructuring as ECM and M&A businesses in Europe and Asia were closed, Keefe is leaving the bank. Bloomberg reports that he has quit and has something lined up. “Gerry Keefe has decided to resign from HSBC to take up a new role,” a spokesperson for HSBC told Bloomberg. “He leaves with our best wishes,” he noted.
Keefe's exit marks the departure of one of the key ex-Citi people in leading roles at HSBC's corporate and institutional bank. Keefe was hired from Citi by Michael Roberts in 2021. Roberts, who is CEO of corporate and institutional banking at HSBC, joined the bank in 2019 after 33 years at Citi.
At HSBC, Keefe was initially appointed head of global banking for the Americas in 2021. He then became co-head of global banking coverage in 2023 and head of banking for Europe and the Americas in January 2025, when the restructuring of Europe and the Americas was announced. As such, he is thought to have been instrumental in executing the investment bank's restructuring plan. That plan came as a shock, but Elhedery has said often that it was necessary to be "ruthless;" there were suggestions that some senior people at HSBC had been collecting $1m pay for doing nothing much.
It is not clear what Keefe will do next. He has long experience of corporate banking from Citi, including senior oversight of selling treasury solutions.
HSBC already has a Keefe replacement. Bloomberg reports that Jo Miyake will do Keefe's job on an interim basis. Miyake joined from BofA in 2021 and is currently head of banking for Asia and the Middle East. Miyake was latterly COO for commodities sales and trading at Bank of America.
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