Yet even this may meet resistance from divisional heads.
Other directors to go from the UK business include the finance director and two divisional heads.
One tactic: getting divisional heads to certify their accounts before passing them up to the boss's office.
The email also details how Autonomy's divisional heads are keeping separate "sheets", thought to be accounts of sales.
The departures turned heads on Wall Street because it was unusual for two divisional heads to retire on the same day.
An industry observer who knows the company well describes the divisional heads as barons over whom the king has little power.
Under the pay plan, in addition to bonuses linked to the bank's and their own personal performance, divisional heads will get a bonus linked to their division's performance.
In the fall of 2007, just as Dominique Strauss-Kahn was starting his job as managing director at the International Monetary Fund, he asked all divisional heads to give him presentations on their specific areas of focus.
Their efforts may help to accelerate a nascent trend: international banks moving global divisional heads, and in HSBC's case its chief executive, eastward.London and New York are hardly spent forces.
While the company declined to provide divisional heads, its non-executive chairman, Lord Stevenson, who has announced plans to retire, was interviewed in addition to the chief financial officer, Rona Fairhead.
Volkswagen is a case in point – the automaker has started heaping blame for a collective failure on to the shoulders of just four people, the CEO and three divisional heads.
