Hundreds of jobs at Accenture UK, many of them from the consulting firm's Systems Integration and Technology (SI&T) unit, are likely to be cut in the wake of the downturn in the banking sector, ZDNet.co.uk has learned.

According to an email sent late Friday to thousands of potentially affected employees in the UK, around 3-4 percent of the Accenture UK workforce is to be shed, with the focus being on the SI&T unit, the Analyst Consulting Group (ACG), and in Talent & Organisational Performance (T&OP) "where it is related to [systems integration] implementation".

From the email:

As you will be aware from our recent earnings call Accenture globally had a strong year but [UK and Ireland] was identified as a Geographic Unit that is experiencing softness in the marketplace. This in part reflects the global economic uncertainties that many companies are experiencing and more specifically issues in the UK Financial Services market which have been widely reported. Both of these had a direct impact on our Systems Integration business during the fiscal year just completed.

To address this situation the [UK and Ireland] Leadership team has reached the difficult decision that we need to consider reducing our total UK workforce by around 3-4% targeting SI&T, ACG and T&OP only

The company is promising a full consultation process as it carries out the redundancies. We'll have more information for you as we get it.