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* Barclays India equities business employs about two dozenpeople
* Final decision on shutting down business expected by Janend (Adds details on India plans, Barclays cost cut context)
By Sumeet Chatterjee
MUMBAI, Jan 4 (Reuters) - Barclays Plc is to closeits Indian equities business as part of efforts to cut costs andboost profit, two sources with direct knowledge of the plan saidon Monday.
The British bank's equities business in India, which wasrolled out in 2011, includes research and broking forinstitutional investors, and employs some two dozen people, thesources told Reuters.
The planned closure is part of Chief Executive Jes Staley'swider plan to cut costs, the sources, who declined to be named,said.
Barclays is midway through a three-year cost-reduction plan,which involves shedding 19,000 jobs, or about 14 percent of itsglobal workforce. In November, the bank put a freeze on hiringuntil the start of 2016.
A spokesman in India for Barclays, whose other operations inAsia's third-largest economy include corporate and investmentbanking, and wealth management, declined to comment.
The London-headquartered bank planned to cut more jobs inits investment banking unit, Reuters reported last month. Mostof these cuts were expected to be in Asia.
Barclays is also weighing the sale of its Asian privatewealth business, for which Singapore's DBS Group Holdings and Julius Baer are seen as potentialbidders, sources told Reuters last month.
The planned shut down of Barclays' equities desk in Indiacomes against the backdrop of a drop in the local stock market -the broader Mumbai stock market index fell 4 percent in2015 - and tough competition from Indian rivals.
Last week, Societe Generale, France'ssecond-biggest bank by market value, said it would shut itsequities research desk in India as part of an internalreorganisation.
Barclays, a late entrant to the Indian equities business,had rolled out its equities business in India at a time whensluggish market conditions had hit volumes and fiercecompetition had driven down fees.
But it had managed to gain market share in the last coupleof years by focussing on foreign as well as domesticinstitutional investors, one of the sources said. (Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee; additional reporting by SavioShetty; editing by Susan Thomas and Alexander Smith)
