The bank is to cut down to ten private bankers in the Middle East, the team having numbered up to 60 people 18 months ago, Reuters reported this morning, citing unnamed sources close to the matter. While the bank has declined to comment on the numbers involved, HSBC is however adamant that it is not looking to shut its private banking operations in the region.

The bank confirmed that Mark Stadler, who was appointed as global market head for MENA in January of last year, has relocated to London as part of management changes across private banking and will be taking up a new role soon, the details of which are as yet unknown. Stadler’s replacement has been named as Sobhi Tabbara, latterly business area head for MENA and Saudi Arabia.

The sources cited in the report said that the bank had decided to scale back private banking to focus on its corporate and retail activities amid an intensely competitive and high-cost environment for private banking in the Middle East. Earlier this week HSBC said net operating income at its global private banking business rose to $3.2 billion in 2011, up from $3.105 billion a year earlier, while the overall parent group logged a 15 per cent rise in pre-tax profit on a reported basis.

In other developments, reports emerged yesterday that HSBC could face criminal or civil charges in the US from a developing investigation into allegedly illegal financial transactions, with some of these activities tied to Iran.

Reports said a disclosure, made in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, showed that inquiries about the activities of the UK/Hong Kong-listed bank have taken an increasingly serious turn. In late January, it was reported that the firm was being probed by a US Senate panel in a money-laundering enquiry.