Around 2000 staff employed in HSBC's Australian banking business are waiting for the company to clarify the local impact of a global cost reduction program that was flagged to British news outlets on Monday.The Financial Times reported that around 10,000 jobs are expected to be cut from the group's international operations as the bank braces for the negative impact of Brexit and economic uncertainty in several of its fastest growing Asian markets.The aggressive cost cutting move is a sign that multinational banks are factoring the prospect of a global economic slowdown into their business planning.HSBC employs about 230,000 staff around the world, which means the job cutting program would reduce its workforce by four per cent.The FT indicated that the bulk of the redundancies would come from HSBC's European operations where earnings growth has trailed the Asian subsidiaries for many years.The European operations delivered a loss of more than US$500 million in the six months to the end of June, while the Asian businesses generated earnings in excess of US$9 billion.This might mean that staff cuts are not likely to be deep in highly profitable markets such as Australia, where HSBC has recorded sustained growth in retail deposit taking and mortgage lending for most of the last decade. That growth has resulted in the company adding more than 300 staff to its Australian business since 2016.In the last five years, HSBC's Australian banking arm has generated higher average annual returns than the group's average return on equity of 11 per cent.In 2018 the local arm posted a net profit of $301 million, which equated to a return on equity of 13 per cent.HSBC is currently looking for a new group chief executive following the sudden resignation of former boss John Flint in August.It has been widely reported in the UK media that Flint had a disagreement with current chairman Mark Tucker over whether cuts to the company's workforce were necessary.Flint is said to have stumped up resistance to Tucker's push to hasten and deepen cost cutting across the bank.