MBNA Corp., the largest issuer of credit cards, is closing its 150-person office in Aliso Viejo, four years after executives with local ties brought the company’s Western U.S. regional office here from San Francisco.
The Aliso Viejo office, which housed administrative and call center operations, was Wilmington, Del.-based MBNA’s only office on the West Coast.
MBNA, which counted $12 billion in 2004 revenue, said it expects 10% profit growth this year. That’s half the 20% average profit growth it’s posted for the past decade.
The Aliso Viejo office, which opened on a five-year lease in 2001, came here because two of the company’s top executives, Vice Chairman Lance Weaver and former chief technology officer Ron Davies, grew up in Orange County.
Davies built a retirement home on Laguna Beach’s Top of the World.
Weaver’s brother, Todd Weaver, a regional vice president, had run the Aliso Viejo office, which is set to close next month.
At the time the office opened, MBNA said it planned to expand in Aliso Viejo and counted 300 workers in 2003. The company leased 48,000 square feet of space in two buildings at the Summit Office Campus.
For more on this story, see the March 21 print edition of the Orange County Business Journal.
