B of A to Close 14 Branches in South County : Finance: Accounts at the Bank of America and Security Pacific offices will be transferred, and no employees will be laid off for at least a few months after the consolidation, a spokesman said.
Bank of America said Tuesday that it will close 14 of its 36 branches from Costa Mesa to San Clemente as it continues to digest last April’s acquisition of Security Pacific National Bank.
The closings are the first to be announced in Orange County, where B of A had a total of 110 branches after the merger of the state’s two biggest banks.
Customer accounts at five B of A branches and nine Security Pacific branches will be transferred to nearby offices--most of them just down the block--during the weekend of Jan. 30-31, said Adrian Rodriguez, a bank spokesman.
In one instance, two branches--Security Pacific’s Leisure World office and B of A’s Laguna Hills office--will be merged into one branch, Security Pacific’s Laguna Hills office on Paseo De Valencia Road.
Among the accounts being transferred are more than $730 million in deposits, according to June, 1991, figures provided by Findley Reports Inc., a bank consulting company in Anaheim.
All employees at the 14 branches will be transferred as well, and no one will be laid off for at least a few months after the consolidation, Rodriguez said.
“Because we’ll have bigger branches, we will need more people to help,” he said. “But we will see some reductions in staffing.”
B of A will not disclose how many employees work in Orange County or at any particular branch. Banking experts, however, suggest that more than 250 employees work at the 14 branches that the bank is closing in South County and that at least half that number will lose their jobs.
B of A’s consolidation of a little more than a third of its branches in South County was “certainly expected,” said consultant Gerry Findley.
Industry experts said that of the other 74 Orange County branches not affected by Tuesday’s announcement, the bank would likely close about a third as it consolidates offices that often are within blocks of each other.
Still to be announced is how the bank will consolidate Security Pacific’s large regional banking headquarters in Costa Mesa and B of A’s two regional centers, one in Orange and one a few blocks away from Security Pacific’s in Costa Mesa. Rodriguez would not say when to expect announcements on the regional centers or the other branches in the county.
After the acquisition of Security Pacific, B of A ended up with 1,483 branches statewide, many of them overlapping.
The bank estimated that up to 12,000 employees from a total worldwide work force of 91,000 would be laid off. Industry experts have said that 20,000 or more employees would likely go.
Part of the reduction came with a hiring freeze that was instituted when the merger was first revealed in August, 1991. By the time the deal was completed in April, 6,000 jobs had been eliminated through attrition, the bank said. The hiring freeze continues.
Through the end of September, the bank has closed about 200 offices statewide, including 35 in San Diego County.
It has not said how many people have been laid off in California, but it said in July that 1,500 workers mostly out of state, had received pink slips since the merger.
In Orange County, the bank is closing four other B of A branches, besides the Laguna Hills office. They are the Newport Beach branch at 3444 Via Lido, the Dana Point branch at 33282 Street of the Golden Lantern and two Mission Viejo branches at 25952 Muirlands Blvd. and at 26991 Crown Valley Parkway. Those operations are being merged into nearby Security Pacific offices.
The bank is closing eight other Security Pacific branches, besides the Leisure World office, merging them into nearby B of A branches. Among them is the Newport Center office at 550 Newport Center Drive, which is the biggest of the 14 branches with $165.6 million in deposits at the end of June, 1991.
The others are the San Clemente branch at 115 N. El Camino Real, the San Juan Capistrano branch at 32201 Camino Capistrano, the El Toro office at 24417 Rockfield Blvd., the Laguna Niguel branch at 30202 Crown Valley Parkway, the Laguna Beach office at 381 Forest Ave., the Corona del Mar branch at 3451 E. Coast Highway and the Costa Mesa office at 196 E. 17th St.
