Close on the heels of banking giant Citibank's decision to eliminate around 10,000 jobs worldwide, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is reported to be planning to cut around 3,000 jobs from its investment banking business in the coming weeks.

RBS is planning a reduction of 3,000 staff in the coming weeks, mostly from its global banking and markets workforce that spans around 50 countries, a BBC report said.

It said that jobs were likely to be cut in the city of London, adding that RBS's high street operations and that of its subsidiary NatWest would remain unaffected. RBS employs around 1.7 lakh people, of which around a lakh are in the UK.

The Scotsman newspaper also reported that RBS would cut around 15 per cent of its global banking and markets work force, while saying that the move would not affect employees from Scotland, and would mainly centre on RBS's investment banking arm.

The report of planned job cuts by RBS follows British Telecom's decision to reduce 10,000 jobs by March 2009, mainly impacting contract staff, offshore workers, and agency employees from its workforce of around 1.6 lakh.

RBS's job cuts follow a bailout package of £20 billion - £15 billion of which would come from the issue of shares to investors while the remaining would be raised from the allotment of preferential shares to the UK government.

Other UK-based companies to have announced downsizing plans include Virgin Media and GlasoSmithKline.

National Australia Group has also announced that it would cut around 350 jobs at its UK banks Clydesdale and Yorkshire. US banking giant Citigroup also announced another 10,000 redundancies gobally.

RBS, which employs about 21,000 staff in investment banking in 50 locations across the globe, is in the late stages of identifying the cuts in its global banking and markets business.

An announcement from RBS on the headcount reduction is expected within weeks, as reported by the media, which estimated that it would most likely translate into a few hundred positions in the UK.