WaMu center to stay open in San Antonio
San Antonio Business Journal - by Tamarind Phinisee
New York-based JPMorgan Chase has announced that it will keep the Washington Mutual regional operations center open in San Antonio.
Greg Hassell, spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, says the center is a vital site for the financial services company.
“It’s a beautiful facility with a hardworking, dedicated staff,” Hassell says. “San Antonio has a very talented and hardworking workforce, which is very good with customer services.”
Hassell says the bank values these types of employees, adding that although the cost of doing business in San Antonio is positive and attractive, what the bank really values is the quality of the local workforce.
The center currently employs 1,800 people.
Hassell says JPMorgan Chase will also keep open its own call center, located in Westover Hills in Northwest San Antonio. That center housed some 2,500 employees, prior to the Washington Mutual (WaMu) acquisition earlier this fall.
The news of the fate of the regional centers here comes in the wake of a round of job cuts announced this week by JPMorgan Chase. Hassell says about 4,000 employees were told that their jobs were being eliminated in the short-term and that they would be released no later than Jan. 30.
An additional 5,200 employees, he says, have been told that they are in transition roles and that their jobs will be ending at different times during 2009.
“They will be paid double their salary during the transition time. All other employees have been told that their jobs will be continuing,” he says.
No significant job reductions are expected for San Antonio, Hassell says. He adds that the lender expects to close some of its Texas branches next year but will transfer employees from those shuttered branches to other locations that remain open.
JPMorgan Chase acquired Seattle-based WaMu’s banking operations from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Sept. 25, 2008, for about $2 billion and assumed the lender’s troubled mortgage loan portfolio.
The acquisition gives JPMorgan Chase a network of more than 5,400 branches.
Chase is the consumer and commercial banking brand of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) — a leading global financial services firm with assets of $2 trillion and operations in more than 60 countries.
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