French banking group BNP Paribas SA is looking to relocate 75 commodity finance jobs to Geneva from Paris to consolidate its specialized trade solutions team focused on Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Reuters reported, citing sources with knowledge of the matter.

The move comes at a time when commodity finance divisions across the banking industry have struggled to improve their profitability amid weak oil prices and price volatility hurting clients in 2018, the newswire reported.

BNP Paribas' commodity finance division has been focusing on small and midsize trading firms instead of major global players ever since it cut its operations after it was fined $8.9 billion for violating U.S. sanctions in 2014, industry sources told the newswire.

A spokeswoman to the French banking group said the lender is maintaining its offerings to clients and has not put the business to question, adding that the staff representative bodies have already been informed of the plan, which would not entail redundancies in Paris.

BNP Paribas said in November that it may lay off up to 250 employees at Swiss unit BNP Paribas (Suisse) SA. An industry source told the newswire that 50 of those were commodity finance jobs.