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Standard Chartered has unveiled a $1.5bn share buyback just weeks after the bank’s stock price was hit by the departure of its chief financial officer.

The Asia-focused lender on Tuesday said pre-tax profits in the final three months of 2025 rose 2 per cent year on year to $814mn, below analyst expectations of $1.1bn, according to estimates compiled by StanChart.

Bill Winters, who is the longest-serving chief executive of a UK bank, is set to outline a new strategy for StanChart in May and see it through to completion, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

Former chief financial officer Diego De Giorgi had been “the driving force” behind the company’s current “fit for growth” programme, according to Jefferies analysts. The strategy aimed to cut waste and find $1.5bn of savings by the end of this year.

De Giorgi had been seen as in contention to succeed Winters before abruptly resigning this month to join private capital group Apollo, a move that sent StanChart’s London-listed stock down nearly 6 per cent in its worst single-day drop in absolute terms since President Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcements last April.

Winters, who previously worked under Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan, became chief executive of StanChart in 2015. His retirement plans have long been a source of speculation in the market.

StanChart’s fourth-quarter profits were driven by 22 per cent and 13 per cent growth, respectively, in its investment products and insurance sales businesses, in a sign of wealth management’s outsized role in banks operating in Asia.

It said it took on 72,000 affluent new clients and $10bn of net new money during the quarter. Roughly a third of its clients are Chinese customers who hold money outside the mainland.

StanChart’s Hong Kong-listed shares rose nearly 3 per cent on Tuesday.

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“We’re absolutely not slowing down in terms of wealth momentum,” said the group’s head of investor relations Manus Costello, who said wealthy clients were increasingly buying investment products rather than just putting their money in deposits.

But operating income from the bank’s global markets division, which includes macro trading, fell 15 per cent year on year to $660mn, in a sign of growing caution.

StanChart said its adjusted return on tangible equity, a measure of profitability, hit 14.7 per cent for the full year, exceeding its 13 per cent target a year early. The bank said it would issue a final dividend of 49 cents a share.

“We are seeing robust growth in our larger markets, and structural shifts in global trade and investment play to our distinctive strengths serving our clients’ cross-border and affluent banking needs,” said Winters.