LONDON (Bloomberg) HSBC Holdings Plc, the UK bank that made more than half of its profit in Asia last year, aims to add at least 2,000 employees in China and Singapore in the next five years to target wealthy individuals in the region.The London-based bank plans to add at least 200 staff in China annually through 2016, and expand its Singapore workforce by about 1,000 people as wealth migrates there from Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and China, said Peter Wong, chief executive officer for the Asia-Pacific region.HSBC aims to reinvest savings from cost cuts to accelerate expansion in Asia’s fast-growing markets including India and Singapore. Assets held by rich Asians will more than triple to $16 trillion by 2015 as growing economies add millionaires., according to Swiss private bank Julius Baer Group Ltd.The UK bank plans to offer more wealth management products in China, including insurance and equity services to customers with minimum deposits and investments of 500,000 yuan ($77,000), Wong said.“This will be the main focus. We forecast that the combined middle-class population of India and China will exceed the population of the US by 2025,” Wong said.The bank now employs more than 5,000 people at its Chinese outlets, with additional staff at processing centers, Wong said.Stuart Gulliver, 52, who became CEO in January, said last week the bank plans to cut costs of $2.5 billion to $3.5 billion by 2013. The bank, Europe’s biggest, wants to cut its cost efficiency ratio to between 48 percent and 52 percent by 2013 from 60.9 percent in the first quarter of this year.Its India and Singapore units reported pretax profit of $679 million and $524 million last year, respectively, according to presentation materials released May 11. Profit before tax in Indonesia was $219 million and in Malaysia totalled $401 million.