FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Germany's second biggest lender Commerzbank is cutting 60 to 70 jobs in its fixed income and currencies (FIC) division in Frankfurt as it adjusts to declining demand, several sources familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
Commerzbank is offering severance packages and is aiming to carry out redundancies through voluntary layoffs, the lender said.
"Fixed Income and Currencies remain an integral part of our investment banking operations. Our offering to our clients remains unchanged," a Commerzbank spokeswoman said.
"Offers like this enable us to react flexibly to customer demand and market changes," she said, without confirming the precise number of planned cuts.
The FIC unit is part of Commerzbank's investment banking division, which altogether employs roughly 1,800 staff.
Commerzbank last year combined the sales and trading arms of its fixed income and currencies business. The redundancies are part of the synergies that have been identified, one of the people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Separately, the lender, like all investment banks, is suffering from sluggish demand for products like interest rate hedging and forex hedging as interest rates are at historic lows and market volatility is also low.
In July, sources familiar with Commerzbank said the lender was widening the scope of its cost-cutting programme and planned to shed more than 450 jobs on top of the 5,200 already announced.
The 'fine tuning' in its fixed income and currencies division is not part of this group-wide cost-cutting measure, the people familiar with it said.
However, from the original job cut measure about 30 layoffs remain to be carried out in the FIC division, bringing the total remaining job cuts at FIC to about 100.
(Reporting by Arno Schuetze; additional reporting by Jamie McGeever; Editing by Kirsti Knolle)