‘Thousands of Jobs’ on Block, Merrill Lynch CEO Says

“Thousands” of job losses will take place after brokerage giant Merrill Lynch is taken over by Bank of America Corp., Merrill’s CEO said Monday, October 20.

Most of the job cuts will occur in the information technology, operations and “corporate-functions” areas, John Thain said in an interview with Bloomberg television.

Jobs in the fixed-income and commodities divisions won’t be eliminated after the takeover is completed, Thain said.

“We haven’t mapped it out in terms of actual number of people, but we are committed to saving $7 billion across the combined platforms, and that will be a challenge,” he said. “Between our two companies, it will be clearly thousands of jobs.”

The company has already cut more than 5,000 jobs in the past 18 months, reducing its payroll to about 60,000 in an effort to cut costs amid a bevy of write-downs related to subprime mortgages.

New York-based Merrill had posted $52.2 billion in losses and write-downs related to subprime mortgages as of October 16, according to Bloomberg.

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America purchased Merrill for $50 billion in September.

Filed by Aaron Siegel of Investment News, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

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