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* Bank plans to reduce costs by $2.9 bln in 2015-2018
* 15,000 jobs - 17 pct of workforce - to be cut
* Firm plans to exit or restructure $100 bln of assets
* Shares fall 8.9 pct (Adds further details of proposals)
By Lawrence White and Steve Slater
HONG KONG/LONDON, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Standard Chartered plans to axe 15,000 jobs and raise $5.1 billion byselling new shares as its new chief executive set out a plan torestore profitability after three years of falling profits andstrategic mistakes.
The bank, regarded as one of the 30 most important in theworld, will cut 17 percent of its workforce to help save $2.9billion by 2018, and sell or restructure $100 billion of loans,or a third of its total.
CEO Bill Winters, a former JPMorgan investment bank boss whotook the helm of Standard Chartered in June, described the moveas an "aggressive and decisive set of actions" to shore up thebank, which makes two-thirds of its profits in Asia.
Winters is one of a handful of new European bank CEOs -including at Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Barclays - whomust push through big restructuring plans to cut costs andimprove profitability in the face of a tougher regulatorylandscape, which has made many banking activities unprofitable.
Standard Chartered's problems were laid bare by news of athird-quarter operating loss of $139 million, weighed down bygrowing global regulatory costs and rising losses on loans inIndia. Revenue slumped 18 percent year-on-year.
It was the fifth successive quarter of falling revenue forthe bank. Before the results, analysts had expected it to reporta $2.9 billion profit this year, compared to $7.5 billion in2012 - the year when many of its troubles began.
The bank was fined $667 million that year for breaking U.S. sanctions related to Iran, and New York's powerful bankingregulator called it a "rogue institution". More trouble followedrelated to strategy, execution and governance, and previous CEOPeter Sands was ousted and replaced by Winters.
Standard Chartered remains under investigation. Winters saidBritain's Financial Conduct Authority has two open probes intothe bank's monitoring of sanctions and anti-money launderingcompliance.
U.S. authorities are also still investigating transactionsinvolving Iranian clients, including whether the bank still hadIran relationships when it signed its 2012 settlement.
Its London-listed shares were down 8.9 percent at 650.4pence by 1141 GMT, the worst-performing stock on the Europeanbank index. They have slumped 32 percent this year,partly due to expectations Winters would launch a rights issueand also on the Asian slowdown.
Major shareholders welcomed the moves to arrest the slide.
"Standard Chartered's management is taking the right stepsto address the bank's problems. The plan outlined seems sensibleand it is clear where the bank now wishes to focus itsbusiness," said Hugh Young, managing director of Aberdeen AssetManagement Asia.
Aberdeen is the bank's second biggest shareholder with anear 9 percent stake, and Young said it would support the rightsissue. Singapore investment company Temasek, the bank'stop shareholder, said it intends to take up its full allocationof the issue, representing 15.8 percent of shares.
STAYING IN LONDON
The rights issue, StanChart's first capital-raising in fiveyears, will be launched on Tuesday at a price of 465 pence pershare, a 35 percent discount to its last traded price in London.Two new shares will be issued for every seven existing shares.
"Post restructuring and recapitalisation Standard Charteredwill be a stronger and more focused group. But the group willremain a complicated work-in-progress during the upcomingyears," said Ronit Ghose, analyst at Citi.
Winters said he had no plans to add to that complexity byconsidering moving headquarters away from London. Its rival HSBC is considering relocating.
"It's absolutely not a priority for us right now. We have anenormous execution agenda and we find the UK to be a verypragmatic and predictable place to do business," Winters toldreporters on a conference call.
Standard Chartered said it would not pay a final dividendfor this year, saving the company $700 million.
The capital-raising and asset-restructuring will togetherpush the bank towards a new common equity tier-1 capital (CET1)ratio goal of 12-13 percent, according to the company.
The bank's current CET1 ratio - a measure of financialstrength - dipped to 11.4 percent at the end of September andwill rise to 13.1 percent after the rights issue.
Analysts had expected Winters would wait until after Bank ofEngland stress test on Dec. 1 before announcing a rights issue.The bank said the regulator was aware of the bank's plans andhad not objected.
Standard Chartered has already cut 4,000 staff this year,and Winters said about 1,000 senior staff, or a quarter of thetop ranks, had already been told they would go. He said he hopedmost other cuts would be made in areas where there was a highnatural attrition.
The sale or restructuring of $100 billion of risk-weightedassets includes $20 billion of big loans to individual borrowersthat Winters said were outside the bank's "risk tolerance" andwould be liquidated.
He plans to further restructure the troubled business inKorea, reposition its activities in Indonesia and shed assets incommercial and investment banking. The bank will also reduce itsretail operations in second and third-tier cities where itcurrently has a presence.
The restructuring will cost $3 billion and Winters said healso plans to invest more than $1 billion over three years toimprove its retail and private banking business, Africa, and toenhance controls. (Additional reporting by Denny Thomas and Umesh Desai; Editingby Muralikumar Anantharaman, Pravin Char and Giles Elgood)
