Insurance giant Ace Ltd is set to open an office on the banks of the river Clyde in Glasgow which will rival its base in Bermuda.

Up to 450 jobs are expected to be brought to Scotland's largest city over the next few months and advertising has already begun in earnest.

Half-page adverts in Scotland's best selling broadsheet, The Herald, have been looking to fill dozens of positions which will allow the new office to perform most back office operations for Ace European Group.

The Ace website at www.aceeuropeangroup.com states the company is looking for 200 jobs ? suggesting the other 250 may be recruited internally.

It is not known if any Bermudians have yet applied for jobs in Scotland.

The centralisation of back-office work in Glasgow is expected to lead to job losses at the company's other offices in the UK and Ireland.

Calls to Ace Europe's Press office in London to find out if any of the Bermuda back office operations would be based here were not returned by press time.

An advert on the front page of the "appointments" section of The Herald asks potential employees to "Help us build a winning team."

"To support our continued growth we will be opening a new service centre located in the heart of Glasgow's financial district," said the advert.

"We have a range of opportunities for individuals who are able to inspire and motivate others."

The jobs advertised include team leaders, technical claims managers, other claims technical roles, a finance manager, operations support manager, an accident and health line of business leader and other accident and health roles.

Some of the new departments will be claims technical, claims operations, accident and health, finance, a contract centre, document management and policy servicing, administration and support units.

The advert states that many of the roles currently service Continental Europe, so candidates with a fluency in any European languages are being looked for.

The job also comes with a non-contributory pension scheme, life assurance, private medical insurance, income protection insurance and 25 days' holiday a year (plus annual public holidays) Globally Ace employs 10,000 in over 50 countries, and at the present has a dozen staff in Glasgow at small office in the city centre in Waterloo Street.

The support service centre will look after the 1,800 people Ace has in offices across Europe.

The new office will be over five floors and is in a new financial district in Glasgow which has been attracting international companies to the city.

The company has accepted a hefty public sector grant to smooth the transfer to the flagship 200 Broomielaw building by the Clyde which has enough space to employ 450 people.

A spokesman for Ace European Group said: "Over the last few months Ace in the UK and Ireland has been engaged in business analysis relating to the possible centralisation on one site of service and processing functions.

"That analysis has now been completed and it was concluded there were significant advantages to relocating these operations (to) Glasgow."

Ace will keep its branch offices, which it says are essential to maintain links between underwriters and local brokers.

Hundreds of back-office staff have been told that a 90-day statutory consultation period on their continued employment began on April 10.

The company's spokesman said it would not be appropriate to comment on potential redundancies or relocation offers until that process is complete.

He added: "It is good news for Glasgow that the city is acquiring a major employer." Other Ace back-office sites are located at Crawley in Sussex, Manchester, London, Bristol and Dublin.

The top four floors at Broomielaw were recently let to Atkins, the UK's largest engineering consultancy.Morgan Stanley is expected to confirm soon the addition of 200 more jobs to its Glasgow operation.

The jobs are expected to be created at the US bank's European finance administration and operations centre in the district.

Fellow American bank JP Morgan announced in late-January that it is to hire an additional 100 people at its Glasgow-based European technology centre.