LONDON - BRITAIN'S Barclays Plc is cutting over 2,100 jobs across its investment banking and investment management (IBIM) units, or about 7 per cent of their staff, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Barclays confirmed it had started a consultation period with staff 'to reduce headcount across some parts of IBIM to ensure that we are appropriately sized given the current market conditions.'

The source said investment bank Barclays Capital will lose about 1,300 jobs, or 6 per cent of staff. About 500 jobs will go in Barclays Wealth and over 300 in Barclays Global Investors, he said.

Job losses at banks are mounting as companies scale down in parts of investment banking and other areas hit hard by the deepening financial crisis.

Some 28,000 financial services jobs were shed in Britain last year, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research. A further 34,000 could go this year, CEBR forecast.

Barclays' cuts will be spread across product areas and geographies hit by the crisis, the source said.

A spokesman for Barclays said it will continue to hire selectively 'across those parts of the business that are growing'. That is likely to include areas such as cash equities, where Barclays is building up after buying the US business of bankrupt US bank Lehman Brothers last September.

Up to now Barclays has avoided job cuts on the scale of many rivals. It cut about 3,500 US staff last year from the combined Barclays and Lehman workforce, and last week cut 400 jobs in its UK technology departments.

BarCap employs about 20,500, Barclays Wealth has about 8,000 staff and BGI has about 3,800 people. -- THOMSON REUTERS