German bank Dresdner has fired almost 300 investment bankers in London as part of a cull that will mean 3,000 job cuts worldwide, according to reports.

The UK cuts at the group's Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW) banking unit follow a year of sharp falls in the merger and advisory business.

Dresdner, owned by the German insurance group, Allianz, first announced the job reductions in August, as part of a shake up of its loss-making DrKW division.

The 300 UK redundancies represent about 10% of the unit's London staff, but the group said up to 1,000 DrKW workers would go globally.

Market tumble

Dresdner is the third largest bank in Germany, but lost 1.2bn euros (�760m) in the second quarter of this year as the slump in the German economy hit earnings.

The company has consistently denied speculation that it is preparing to sell its DrKW unit.

Leonhard Fischer, DrKW's chief executive, said earlier this year that he expected the division to be back in profit next year but admitted: "We have to clean up our house and backyard, we have to restructure."

Since the start of the year, the banking industry as a whole has shed almost 60,000 jobs worldwide.

A study from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) in June predicted that 21,000 jobs would go in London alone by next year as the investment market continues to struggle.