HSBC culls - FT.com HSBC , the Asia-focused UK bank, must cull underperforming businesses and fire 30,000 staff if it means to hit its ambitious return on equity target of 12-15 per cent next year. With a workforce roughly twice the size of the UK army, shaving a 10th of its staff should help. Since taking over as mahout of the Big Elephant at the start of 2011, chief executive Stuart Gulliver has been more like a fund manager rebalancing a scattered investment portfolio. About time. In the latest reallocation, announced on Tuesday, HSBC is negotiating to sell its retail and wealth management unit in South Korea, with total assets of $26bn, to Korea Development Bank, and is exiting operations in Pakistan and retail banking in Mauritius. So far, Mr Gulliver has sold or shut 23 outposts in markets where HSBC was firing blanks or had strayed from its core business of commercial banking and trade finance. Exits include consumer finance, insurance, private equity, retail banking and wealth management units in the Americas, Africa, central and eastern Europe, and Asia, removing about 12,000 staff from the payroll. But Mr Gulliver's targeted $3.5bn of cost savings will boost ROE only so much. Just as well the retreat from non-core business will cut risk-weighted assets by $60bn. It is not all sell and close. HSBC is bolting on businesses where it is under-represented. Acquiring the onshore retail operations of Lloyds Banking Group in the United Arab Emirates, with gross assets of $769m, is one example. Financial progress will be elephant-like. But investors should be patient. After all, Mr Gulliver has taken the biggest step in defining HSBC's future by recognising that the banking industry needs to change fast. HSBC's shares, trading at 1.1 times book value - a discount to less globally minded regional peers - belie its head start.