Is Morgan Stanley about to make redundancies too? And - overall - are risk professionals getting particularly hammered?

Banks are making redundancies. Credit Suisse, Deutsche Standard Bank, and BarCap have all been at it so far. Rumour has it that Morgan Stanley will be next.

Morgan Stanley announces its third quarter results on Wednesday, and is said to have alerted staff to imminent redundancies. "It seems to be quite marginal," says the head of one markets-focused search firm. "They're not taking out big numbers, just some guys in the middle office and some areas of sales."

Middle office staff seem to be suffering particularly in redundancy rounds everywhere. At BarCap, mid-ranking IT professionals were targeted. At Deutsche, areas like operational risk are said to be experiencing big budget cuts and developers are allegedly being let go. At Standard Bank, one recruiter says London-based quant risk jobs are being moved to South Africa. "But it only affects around 10 people," she says.

Cuts in risk jobs come after the function has enjoyed generous pay increases. Although front office positions are still far more remunerative, banks' heads of recruitment say the movement of former traders into risk positions has pushed up pay and is creating a two tier risk compensation structure.

"Traders have always moved into risk for lifestyle reasons, but more recently it's been seen as a career move as well," says Adrian Marples at recruiters Kinsey Allen International.

Giving the apparent susceptibility of risk to cuts, traders will have to hope their new career isn't curtailed prematurely.