Two Geneva-based banks specialising in hedge funds have said they will make “a few dozen” employees redundant, according to reports in the newspaper Le Temps.

Banque Syz & Co has confirmed it will make 12 redundancies in Geneva – the first time it has had to do this in its 14-year history after increasing its staff 16 per cent to 370 in 2008.

Union Bancaire Privée has also made some redundancies but has not confirmed the number, stating that it “does not justify a public announcement”.

Under Swiss regulations, if a company the size of UBP makes more than 30 people redundant in any one month, it has to announce this publicly. The bank employs over 1,300 people, down from the 1,372 figure announced for the end of December 2008.

Both of the two banks have suffered from the calamitous performance of many hedge funds in 2008, having positioned themselves as specialists in the sector. UBP announced a 15.6 per cent drop in profits for 2008 in January. The 2008 results for Banque Syz have yet to be published but they are expected to be lower than 2007.

Swiss rules about announcement of redundancies have, according to anecdotal evidence, created a form of “redundancy by stealth”, with banks letting a few people go each month. Whilst this does not require the banks to announce their actions, it is hardly good for morale in a country where redundancy is rare. It will be interesting to compare the numbers of employees at the end of 2008 with those announced at the end of this year. Then the true extent of the reduction in the number of bank employees will become clear.