BNP Paribas to cut 5 pct of investment banking jobs in UK - source

PARIS, May 18 (Reuters) - BNP Paribas (LSE: 0HB5.L - news) plans to cut its investment banking staff in Britain by around 5 percent in 2016, a source familiar with the matter said, offering details of the bank's broader plan to cut costs in a division hit by tighter regulation and a slump in revenue.

BNP (Paris: FR0000131104 - news) plans to axe 233 British jobs but will also be hiring 60 employees there -- bringing the net headcount down to 3,105 in 2016 from 3,278 in 2015, the source said without giving details on where the job cuts would come from.

A similar net number, 179 in all, will be hired in lower-cost Poland, increasing its staff there by about half to 507 employees.

Elsewhere in Europe, Italy would see a net decrease in headcount, while Spain, Portugal and Ireland (Other OTC: IRLD - news) would see some hiring, the source said.

Italy could see a net fall in headcount of 27 jobs in 2016, down from the 635 employees it had at the end of 2015.

The French bank has said it is targeting more than one billion euros of cost savings at its investment bank over the next three years, but outside of France, it has yet to put any numbers on resulting job losses around Europe.

It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) announced earlier in April a voluntary redundancy plan that calls for up to 675 job cuts at its corporate and institutional bank (CIB) in France, which employs 6,000 staff.

The CIB operations of BNP Paribas in Britain are headquartered in central London near Marylebone.

BNP Paribas declined to comment.

(Reporting by Maya Nikolaeva in Paris and Sophie Sassard in London; Editing by Andrew Callus and Louise Heavens)