The US investment bank JP Morgan Chase is planning to cut about 3,000 jobs to counter a steep downturn in revenues, according to press reports.

The figure is equivalent to 15% of the bank's global workforce, and comes on top of an initial round of job cuts earlier this year.

The latest round of lay-offs could affect up to 1,000 staff at JP Morgan's London offices, the Business newspaper reported.

The redundancies come in response to a slump in corporate mergers and acquisitions in the US, one of the bank's key activities.

JP Morgan has also been hit bad loans to struggling telecommunications companies.

Hire and fire

The bank signalled that more job cuts were in the pipeline last month, when it warned investors that its profits for the July to September period would come in below market expectations.

The news triggered a sharp decline in JP Morgan's share price. The bank's stock fell another 6% on Friday, bringing its decline for the year to date to 54%.

Other investment banks, including Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Merrill Lynch and ABN Amro, have also trimmed their employee headcounts in recent months as a sharp slump in global stock markets has put lucrative corporate deal-making on hold.

In June, the Centre for Economics and Business Research, a London-based think-tank, predicted that 21,000 financial sector jobs in the City of London would go by next year.

JP Morgan Chase, formed two years ago from the takeover of JP Morgan by rival Chase Manhattan, had expanded its workforce so as to be able to offer a complete range of financial services.