You should probably use a module for this, but I'll answer anyway (I'm a re-invent the wheel person myself). You needn't escape the <>'s. Also, there can be attributes between the "a" and the "href", so you need to use a ".". I've updated the regex and hopefully made it a little cleaner too.

$remainder =~ s/< \s*? a \s .*? href .*?>//xi;
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