Illinois Jobs to Be Lost as Bank Consolidation Begins

JP Morgan Chase & Co. acquisition of Washington Mutual Inc maybe but for the financial giant, but it cause the loss of Illinois jobs. The firm recently announced that it plans to close branches in the states where the two have service overlaps.

Both of these companies are rather big in Illinois, which means that there are many locations where Chase will now own multiple offices that are extremely close to each other. In these cases, the firm has said that it may decide to close one of the branches in an effort to merge business, but has said that it has no plans to sell off any of the locations.

“Those consolidations could be from a WaMu brank or a Chase branch,” the company said in a recent press release. The decision as to which to shut down will be made on case by case basis depending on such facts as the location of the branches in question and the terms of the leases involved.

Throughout the nation Chase has said that it may close as many as 400 branches. As of now, the company has not commented on how many locations will be closed down in each state, so the exact number of Illinois jobs that will be lost is still unknown.

Rather than saying how many employees will be laid off, Chase has said that it expects to decrease the combined companies spending by $1.5 billion. This is approximately 15 to 20 percent of WaMu’s non interest expenses.

"We've got expense numbers, but even in places where we intend to close branches, in places like Illinois, even though we might consolidate branches we hope to find a lot of people jobs in the company” said a representative for the firm.

The company hopes to begin consolidating the branches sometime next year.