The broadsheet said the bank is preparing to cut hundreds of jobs at its head offices in London and streamline its international network as part of a strategic review being led by the bank's new boss Antonio Horta-Osorio.

The reports come just days after the bank axed a further 300 jobs, and moved to close one of its call centres in Wales, bringing the total number of job losses at the taxpayer-backed institution to 28,000 since the start of the banking crisis.

Horta-Osorio is set to lay out his plans in a meeting with analysts at the end of the month. The Sunday Times says he is unlikely to put a figure on the number of jobs to be shed, but will instead draw up a series of cost-cutting targets.

Speaking to newswire Reuters, a Lloyds spokesman dismissed the report as 'purely speculative".