Washington Mutual Inc. may be the largest bank or thrift to fail, but the federal seizure of its operations and their transfer to JPMorgan Chase & Co. isn’t expected to have much negative impact locally.
It could even turn out to be an overall plus.
Chase Bank, the retail banking arm of JPMorgan Chase, has no bank branches in Orange County.
So as it absorbs Washington Mutual’s 60 OC branches in the next several months, few if any closings or layoffs are expected.
“One of the big attractions of this purchase was WaMu’s California bank branches,” said JPMorgan Chase spokesman Tom Kelly.
Washington Mutual does have administrative offices in Irvine that work on mortgages. The fate of that operation still is unclear.
In the past two years Washington Mutual had scaled back its mortgage loan processing operations in Irvine.
With few cuts expected, the deal could turn into a positive for the region.
Washington Mutual was the county’s third-largest depository institution at the time of its seizure with $7.7 billion in local deposits.
“For months now, the fate of WaMu and all its branches here has been very much up in the air,” said Wade Francis, president of Unicon Financial Services Inc. in Long Beach, a banking consulting firm. “This deal will add stability to the Southland banking scene as one of the strongest and best-run banks in the country now becomes the second largest player here.”
,Los Angeles, Orange County business journals
