J. P. Morgan Chase & Co. is likely to shut down all but 15% to 20% of Washington Mutual Inc.’s Chicago-area branches, according to the real estate broker who brought the Seattle-based bank into the market in the first place.
Greg Kirsch, principal in the Chicago office of Newmark Knight Frank, a New York-based real estate brokerage, said obvious candidates for closure are WaMu branches close to Chase’s own and those with leases nearing expiration.
WaMu, which collapsed under the weight of its enormous bad bets on the mortgage market, was seized Thursday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which then sold the thrift’s banking assets to J. P. Morgan Chase for $1.9 billion.
Banking industry sources have said J. P. Morgan is expected to close most of WaMu’s 117 locations here and move the deposits into its existing network.
All told, J. P. Morgan said it will shut down 400 to 500 branches of the combined bank across the country. It’s likely that most of the closings will take place in the seven states where both banks overlap: Illinois, Texas, New York, Colorado, Utah, New Jersey and Connecticut. A J. P. Morgan spokesman said there was no breakdown for the number of closures in Illinois.
“When it’s done, (J.P. Morgan and WaMu) customers will have more branches and ATMs than they had separately,” the spokesman said.
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