Local banking expert Tony Plath predicts Citigroup Inc.’s purchase of Wachovia Corp.’s banking operations will result in a loss of about 3,000 jobs in Charlotte.
But Plath, a UNC Charlotte finance professor, says the job losses likely would have been larger is Wells Fargo & Co. had made a deal for Wachovia.
On Sunday night, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times had reported that Wells and Citi were making competing bids for the Charlotte-based bank.
On Monday morning, Citi announced it would buy Wachovia’s banking operations in a $2.1 billion deal.
“From an employee standpoint, the people in the general bank are a lot safer now than if Wells had bought them,” he says, noting Wells is already strong in retail banking and would have cut more operations and administrative functions here. “Citi won’t because Citi needs that infrastructure.”
