Barclays is cutting over 1,000 jobs in its investment banking sector worldwide and will close its Asia cash equities business as new CEO Jes Staley starts to wield the chopping block in an attempt to lower costs and to boost returns.

These cuts were harsher than had been expected and were amongst the most sweeping by any investment bank over recent years. They follow moves similar by other lenders in Europe seeking to lower costs in a tough environment globally for banks.

Barclays will shutter investment banking in countries that included Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, Philippines, Thailand and Taiwan showed an internal memo that was seen by an international news agency with those particular markets being covered by cities in financial hubs in their regions.

The axe is also going to fall across much of eastern and central Europe as well as South America, with closings of offices and activity being routed through the home base of the lender’s in London.

The memo lacked any details on the number of jobs being affected but people that have knowledge of the matter said that 1,000 positions were going to be axed.

Most of them were going to be across Asia, an area where dropping trade volume and much tougher competition from area banks has hit profits.

The most recent cull comes as an addition to the cuts of 19,000 announced by the CEO in his cost reduction program of three years.

Barclays investment bank at the end of 2014 employed 20,500 according to an annual report and the bank overall had more than 132,200 employees.

Spokespeople in London and Hong Kong for Barclays declined to make a comment on the latest job cuts.

Ten of the largest lenders in Europe have announced job losses totaling 130,000 since June of last year, with CEOs of banks pulling back from companies where they lacked scale to focus on markets that were more profitable.

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