HSBC Closure at Newport | £14 million investment in danger

12.00.00am GMT Thu 26th Mar 2009

HSBC annouce job cuts in Newport

The decision by the UK 's biggest internal banking concern HSBC to close it's Newport Office at Cleppa Park has been greeted by a leading member of the National Assembly for Wales with dismay.

Local Welsh Liberal Democrat Assembly Member, Michael German, commented after the bank announced that 90 staff employed faced potential redundancy. "Only this morning we were being told on the news that only IT and Human Resources staff were affected by the announcement of job losses. The announcement by the bank said that this would not affect customer services. Yet here it is frontline services being cut."

Mr. German said that he was confused by the apparent mixed messages the banking corporation were giving Assembly Members: "HSBC say that the Newport operation is no longer viable for a number of reasons. Only in June of last year I was welcoming the news of the bank's decision to invest in Newport, then creating over 150 jobs. One of the major reasons for Newport's 'win' was the quality of the service being provided by existing staff. Newport beat off strong competition from other sites in the UK and most notably from India."

Saying that he was 'dismayed' by the decision of HSBC to make cuts in it's operations in Newport, the Assembly Member for the Gwent area added, "In the nine months since the decision to expand operations at Newport there was been worldwide economic turmoil. I will be asking the bank how in the space of just nine months and based on concrete reasons for choosing Newport as the first place to make redundancies. They have made a complete turnabout."

"HSBC's investment of £14 million in Newport is in danger and I will be asking the Welsh Assembly Government to pull out all the stops, save local jobs, and secure that investment that was due to be made this year and in 2010."