BANKING giant HSBC has confirmed plans to axe up to 25,000 jobs worldwide including as many as 8,000 in the UK and revealed it is to rebrand its British high street operations.

The bank said the job losses are part of a overall cull which will reduce its total full-time workforce by about 10 per cent to slash costs and overhaul the business.

It will also shrink its employee base by another 25,000 amid plans to sell off operations in Turkey and Brazil.

HSBC – which employs around 48,000 of its 258,000 staff in the UK – added that its UK retail bank, which is being relocated from London to Birmingham by 2019 amid regulatory “ringfencing’’ rules, will operate under a new brand name that is yet to be decided.

There are currently 15 branches in Oxfordshire including those in Cornmarket Street, Summertown and Headington in Oxford, and Kidlington and Abingdon. Yesterday, HSBC said it couldn’t comment on which branches would be affected.

The group also delivered a blow to customers by announcing aims to trim its worldwide network of branches by 12 per cent, with the UK being one of seven regions to be impacted.

It declined to give further details for UK branch closures.

Speculation is mounting that plans to rename HSBC’s retail arm will see a return of the Midland brand to the high street, as its UK branches used to be known as Midland Bank before they were swallowed up by HSBC in 1992.

HSBC has 1,057 branches across the UK.

The swingeing job cuts come as the bank seeks to deliver annual cost savings of around £2.9bn to £3.3bn by the end of 2017.

The group also announced aims to sell its businesses in Turkey and Brazil because they do not have the scale needed to compete with rivals.

In its keenly-awaited strategy update, HSBC added it would make a decision about where to base its headquarters by the end of the year, after announcing recently that it was considering a move away from the UK due to regulatory and structural reforms.

If given the go ahead, it would likely take the bank two years to move its headquarters.

Chief executive Stuart Gulliver said: “We recognise that the world has changed and we need to change with it.”

The bank said it would target a reduction of its group risk-weighted assets of around £189bn – including reducing its investment banking division to less than a third of its balance sheet.

It added that it wanted to return the global banking and markets division to profitability – an area which has become more expensive for banks in the tougher regulatory environment since the financial crisis.

The Unite union said the UK job cuts were the latest example of a workforce being punished for the misconduct of senior and investment bankers. Dominic Hook, Unite national office for finance, said: “ “After all the scandals of recent years, frontline staff have suffered time and time again as they are forced to pay for the mistakes of others with their jobs, their terms and conditions and their reputation.”