HSBC Holdings has exited its US domestic mass market retail banking business, agreeing to sell 90 branches. With this decision, Europe’s biggest lender looks to focus on wealthy clients and steer billions of dollars in capital towards Asia. 

The London-based bank will retain a network of 20 to 25 locations that will be transformed into international wealth centres, according to a statement of the bank. It is closing 35 to 40 other branches. The bank expects a pre-tax cost of $100 million from the transactions. 

The move is a part of a larger plan of HSBC to invest more in Asia, where it is focused on banking the region’s wealthy, as the lender also looks at exiting businesses in Europe. The bank has announced that it will cut about 35,000 jobs globally to boost profitability after years of struggling with rock-bottom interest rates. 

“They are good businesses, but we lacked the scale to compete,” HSBC Chief Executive Officer Noel Quinn has said in the statement. “Our continued presence in the US is key to our international network and an important contributor to our growth plans,” he has added.  

HSBC has one of the largest US businesses of any non-American bank, partly a result of its ill-fated acquisition of Household International in 2003, the subprime lender that ended up costing the company billions of dollars in writedowns. 

The transaction will see HSBC exiting mass-market retail banking in the US and will focus on offering banking and wealth management services to an international customers’ base of about 300,000 wealthy clients.