Fox-Pitt Kelton cuts 10% of workforce

The investment bank, which belongs to insurer Swiss Re, has laid off about 45 of its 450 employees.

Its staff in London, where it employs around 200 people, are thought to have mostly escaped the job losses.

Offices in New York, where most of the rest of Fox-Pitt Kelton's staff work, Hong Kong and San Francisco bore the brunt of the cuts. The back office is thought to have lost more staff than the front.

Fox-Pitt Kelton has a reputation for eschewing the hire-and-fire approach of many of its larger competitors. It had resisted large-scale job cuts for the past two years, in which most of its competitors have fired far more than 10% of their workforces.

The job losses are thought to be in part because of further consolidation of Swiss Re's financial services operations with Fox-Pitt Kelton.

The bank is in Swiss Re's financial services business group, which the Fox-Pitt Kelton brand dominates.

A spokesman for Fox-Pitt Kelton said no mainstream parts of the business would be affected.

Fox-Pitt Kelton's corporate finance business has won several mandates recently, including one as co-lead manager on last week's 157m (€222m) initial public offering of Benfield Group, the global reinsurer.