KPMG is to shed around 90 staff from its corporate finance and transaction service teams in the first concrete sign of the damaging effects of the credit crunch.

The move will send chills through the transactions departments of other firms. The lack of deals means corporate financiers are not in strong demand.

KPMG has not formally announced the number of redundancies. A spokesman confirmed there had been ‘a number’ of job losses in the two divisions. ‘This is related to market conditions that we and other organisations are encountering.’ There were currently no plans for firm-wide redundancies, he said.

The firm had announced strong performance in both corporate finance and transaction services in 2006/2007, growing 16% and 25% respectively. Last year’s numbers would not have reflected the credit crunch greatly, however, with the firm’s year end in September.

The last major wave of job cuts in the firms followed the collapse of Andersen and a market downturn in 2002, during which KPMG shed around 1,000 staff.