Fewer visitors are traveling from France and Italy following the end of banking secrecy, said Eric Kuhne, a member of the board of the three-star Hotel Astoria, which is located in front of the central Cornavin train station. Both the Kempinski and the Astoria now take more bookings from visitors for diplomatic talks and other conferences taking place in the city, Lavalley and Kuhne said.

Empty Offices

About 31,000 square meters (334,000 square feet) of prime commercial real estate around Place de Bel-Air is unoccupied, roughly the same as four soccer fields. Since 2011, the canton of Geneva’s office-vacancy rate has more than tripled to almost 8 percent, the highest in 10 years, according to AMI. That’s pushing down the highest prices in the center of the city, the firm said.

Lloyds vacated its Geneva building after selling its international private-banking business to Union Bancaire Privee.

On the opposite side of the Rhone River are the empty former offices of Coutts International, a business acquired by UBP last year from Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. The next tenant won’t be a financial company, according to Reginato, whose company is advising on the lease.

Once a hub for hidden European and American assets, tougher scrutiny on the real ownership of assets and more stringent reporting standards have made offshore private banking in Geneva less profitable.

Bank of America Corp. sold its Merrill Lynch international-wealth businesses to Julius Baer Group Ltd., while Royal Bank of Canada divested its Geneva business to local firm Banque Syz SA. Morgan Stanley sold its Swiss wealth business, also based in the city, to the private bank and asset-management firm owned by billionaire Joseph Safra. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. plans to close a Geneva branch with 18 employees to streamline its operations, a person briefed on the situation said in March.

It’s not only foreign banks that are shrinking. UBS Group AG, Switzerland’s largest lender, is closing its capital-markets business in Geneva and shifting about 10 jobs to its headquarters in Zurich, according to three people familiar with the matter. The bank declined to comment.

Falciani Database

Tax authorities worldwide are still poring over a client database stolen from HSBC Holdings Plc’s Geneva private bank by former information-technology worker Herve Falciani a decade ago. Client assets managed by the British lender in Switzerland slumped after it overhauled compliance and risk controls.