The 6,000 UK staff of Goldman Sachs were last night bracing themselves for a cull of one in ten of their number as the City's most revered investment bank sheds jobs to cut costs.

US-based Goldman plans to cut 3,300 jobs from its worldwide workforce of 33,000 as it attempts to trim its cost base to match a dramatically changed post-crunch financial world.

The unfortunate 10 per cent may lose not only their jobs but also their bonuses, which are due to be set at the end of November and paid in January. Billions of dollars have been set aside for bonuses this year. Total remuneration, including accrued bonuses, reached $11.4 billion in the nine months to August - equivalent to $345,000 (£214,000) per employee.

According to one source, employees who are made redundant before bonuses are set will not qualify for any portion of the bonus as part of their compensation for loss of office.

Goldman was, until recently, seen as one of the banks most immune to the downturn in financial markets, staying top of the league tables for merger advice and avoiding many of the trading mistakes that tripped up rival banks.

However, third-quarter profits sank by 71 per cent to $810 million and Goldman expects future results to be much more subdued because it is less willing to risk its capital.

Jobs in proprietary trading, structured credit, leveraged loans, prime brokerage, mergers and acquisitions and equity capital markets look vulnerable because of the sharp drop in business suffered by all investment banks.

Richard Snook, of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, which tracks City jobs, predicted that 28,000 wholesale financial services jobs would go in London over the next year. “Goldman is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said, forecasting job losses across the board, from equities and bond trading to hedge funds and mergers and acquisitions.

Thousands of City jobs have already been lost as Citigroup, UBS and Morgan Stanley pare back. The Lehman Brothers collapse has led to a net 2,500 jobs being lost. Royal Bank of Scotland is expected to cut thousands from its payroll as it drastically cuts back its 25,000-strong global markets division. Thousands more City jobs - as well as branch and call centre staff - would eventually go when Lloyds TSB takes over HBOS.

It was not clear yesterday whether Goldman's planned 10 per cent job cuts included, or were on top of, the pruning of the workforce by 5 per cent that it does at the start of each year to weed out what it sees as weaker staff.

Although Goldman continues to win clients and mandates - advising BHP on its bid for Rio Tinto - it has not been able to withstand the slump in financial markets activity.

News of Goldman's job-cuts plan comes just days before it names those staff elevated to the envied rank of partner, the level at which rewards soar.

Goldman, which in the past month has received capital injections from the US Government and Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, declined to comment yesterday.

Straumur-Burdaras, the Icelandic investment bank, said it was saving up to 80 London jobs as it bought the Teathers name from the administrators of Landsbanki in the UK and hired some of its staff.

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