Leadership | 'Snooty' & outdated - but was HSBC right to scrap its 160-year-old management scheme?

For 160 years, HSBC sent fledgling recruits across the world to gain the relationships, cultural insight, and management acumen they would need to one day rise to the bank’s top brass.

By our count, that was (roughly) around the time Queen Victoria was mourning the death of Prince Albert, and punters were clamouring for the next instalment of Dickens' Great Expectations, rather than the latest Stranger Things.

In that time, countless leaders have passed through the International Manager Scheme – once named the financial world’s “most idiosyncratic and powerful network” – including former HSBC CEOs Stuart Gulliver and John Flint.

Enter stage left, chief exec Georges Elherdy, who just brought 16 decades of history to a close by axing the programme in a bid to cut costs. Boo! Hiss!