The CEO of a London-based banking giant triggered a backlash among shareholders, customers and social media users after describing the staff he plans to replace with AI as “lower-value human capital”.

Standard Chartered plans to axe nearly 8,000 jobs as it ramps up its use of artificial intelligence and automation.

The bank’s CEO, Bill Winters, announced the plans as part of a drive to improve profitability across its global operations.

“It’s not cost-cutting. It’s replacing in some cases lower-value human capital ​with the financial capital and the investment capital we’re putting in,” Winters told reporters.

The remarks attracted widespread condemnation, with Singapore’s president Halimah Yacob describing them as “disturbing”.

“‘Workers are human beings with families, not just a form of capital. They too have contributed to the bank and now because of AI have become redundant,” Yacob wrote on Facebook. “It’s demeaning to describe them as ‘lower-value human capital’.”

The comments sparked fury on social media, with one user describing it as a modern-day version of Marie Antoinette’s famous phrase “let them eat cake”. Another compared it to the Nazis’ use of the term “ballast existence” to describe groups they considered socially undesirable.

Standard Chartered is headquartered in London and has corporate hubs across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas.

The bank employs nearly 82,000 people globally, but plans to slash 15% of back-office positions by 2030.

Winters – who reportedly took home £12.7m in pay last year – later sent a memo to staff claiming that his comments were taken “out of context”.

“I know this may be unsettling when reduced to simple headlines or a quote out of context,” he wrote. “Where roles do fall away, it reflects changes in the work, not the value of our people.”

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