"Bank of America Merrill Lynch is to lay off a fifth of its 75 managing directors in Asia as part of a reshuffle at the troubled US lender," a daily reported.

The move is the latest in a round of job losses at investment banks, which come after performance reviews at the end of 2011, the report said.

The report said that BofA's job losses are part of a wider shake-up in Asia under its corporate and investment banking chief Matthew Koder, who joined BofA from UBS last March.

As part of the job cut, Michael Cho, co-head of Asian mergers and acquisitions division will exit the firm, it added.

According to the publication, BofA declined to comment on the job cut.

The moves are separate to BofA's "Project New BAC" reorganisation, its scheme to streamline the entire bank and cut costs, which was ordered by chief executive Brian Moynihan in the face of depressed earnings and protracted mortgage losses and litigation from its disastrous 2008 acquisition of Countrywide, the mortgage originator.

Moynihan is trying to convince investors that the bank is on course to meet tougher capital requirements.

The bank has already identified tens of thousands of job cuts it wants to make on the consumer side of the business, the report noted.