Bank of America Corporation will cut as many as 35,000 jobs over the next three years amid weak economic situation and following the completion of its merger with Merrill Lynch.
"Bank of America expects to have a final plan early in 2009 and estimates it will project reduction of approximately 30,000 to 35,000 positions over the next three years," a company statement said.
The US banking giant further said, "The reductions are designed to eliminate redundancies created as a result of the merger with Merrill Lynch and to reflect the current recessionary environment."
The layoffs were from both companies and would affect all lines of business and staff units, the company said, adding that as many reductions as possible would be made through attrition. "Severance and other benefits will be provided for those associates whose jobs are eliminated and who cannot be offered another position," it said.
Earlier, in September the Federal Reserve had given a formal approval to the Bank of America for acquiring troubled financial services firm Merrill Lynch.
On completion of the acquisition, Bank of America would be the largest depository organisation in the US, with total consolidated assets of about $2.7 trillion.
Shareholders of both Bank of America as well as Merrill Lynch have approved the takeover and the transaction is likely to be completed on January 1, 2009.
The financial services giant, however, ascertained that it was continuing to do business actively with all of its client segments.
"Bank of America continues to benefit from a flight to safety, attracting deposits and new client relationships. In addition, the company continues to actively originate loans through all of its credit product lines," the statement added.
The Bank of America job cut announcement comes only weeks after another US bank Citigroup announced a massive 75,000 job cuts.
With this announcement, Bank of America has joined the league of biggies who announced the job cuts like telecom giant AT&T and banking major Credit Suisse, among others.
Telecom entity AT&T would slash 12,000 jobs or about four per cent of its total workforce. Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse would be axing 5,300 jobs, accounting for 11 per cent of its global workforce, by the first half of the next year.
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