Bank of the West is set to cut nearly 250 jobs in a fresh round of layoffs, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification report filed in California.
The San Francisco-based lender will trim 203 staff tied to its Camino Ramon office and 45 at its former headquarters at 180 Montgomery St. in the city’s financial district, according to the notice, which was filed at the Employment Development Department in California. The job cuts will be effective from Sept. 15.
“We are working closely with affected employees to provide support and to ensure they are treated with fairness and respect,” a Bank of Montreal spokesperson said in an email to Banking Dive.
BMO agreed to buy Bank of the West from BNP Paribas $16.3 billion in December 2021— a deal that would create the 13th-largest U.S. commercial bank with roughly $256 billion in assets, according to OCC figures. The deal closed on Feb. 1, this year.
The spokesperson highlighted that BMO has no plans to shut down Bank of the West branches in connection to the transaction.
Following BMO’s conversion over the Labor Day weekend, Bank of the West clients would get access to more product options to help them make financial progress, the spokesperson said.
“We are supporting California communities through BMO EMpower 2.0, our more than $40 billion community benefits plan, with over $16 billion dollars of the planned commitment targeted for California,” the emailed statement said.
Acquiring Bank of the West will boost BMO’s U.S. subsidiary, BMO Harris, with $91.8 billion in assets, about 1.8 million new customers and roughly 500 branches. The addition will help BMO make a steady footprint in the West Coast.
Meanwhile, in June, BMO’s capital markets unit culled around 100 positions or 3.5% of the department’s staff owing to a weak environment for deals.
“We are focused on managing expenses dynamically, growing revenue and improving our relative efficiency ratio,” BMO spokesperson Kelly Hechler told Bloomberg and The Globe and Mail at the time.
