Even giant corporations are affected by the continuing global economic slack off. In Hong Kong, one of Asia's iconic banks, HSBC will furlough 3,000 employees over the next three years, The Globe and Mail reported.

Speaking in anonymity due to company policy, a ranking officer of the bank said the decision is consistent with the bank's previous announcement on global restructuring with the aim of making HSBC more efficient and less bureaucratic. And since a fraction of the employees will be sent elsewhere to perform other roles, the specific number of people losing their jobs will actually be lesser, a related AP report said.

The bank officer added that HSBC's retrenchment shall be followed by restructuring of its operations in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States. HSBC employs 23,000 people in Hong Kong and 296, 000 worldwide.

In August, the British Bank announced that it will also sell almost half of its retail bank branches in the United States with hopes to save up to US$3.5 billion and concentrate its investments on fast-pacing emerging markets, according to the Wall Street Journal.

HSBC is not the first in the banking sector to initiate the layoffs. Earlier this year, banks such as New York Mellon Corporation, Bank of America Corporation, and Goldman Sachs Group Incorporated had also laid off employees.

Giant banks are hurting in profits as they are not reaping as much as they used to from large-scale trading and complicated investments, which according to The Globe and Mail reports, "backfired and fueled the global financial crises".