WaMu To Lay Off 4,600 in Bay Area, Seattle

SAN FRANCISCO-Some 4,600 Washington Mutual employees in Washington and California are expected to lose their jobs in shortly after the New Year as new owner JP Morgan Chase integrates the Seattle-based bank into its overall operations, according to the two companies and other sources. WaMu employs an estimated 13,000 in California, another 4,300 in Seattle and more than 43,000 nationwide.

JP Morgan notified WaMu employees on Thursday that it would close the 1,200-person, 217,000-square-foot Washington Mutual operations (call) center in Pleasanton by early spring of 2009 and that it will eliminate 400 jobs in its San Francisco operations center at 201 Mission St. in advance of a full shutdown of the center in late 2009 or early 2010, according to multiple local reports on Friday. A WaMu spokesperson did not immediately return a GlobeSt.com phone call seeking independent confirmation.

The Seattle Times this week reported that as many as 3,000 of WaMu’s 4,200 workers in Seattle could lose their jobs , citing current and recently departed WaMu executives who spoke on condition of anonymity. WaMu owns a brand new 900,000-square-foot office tower in Downtown Seattle and leases an additional 700,000 square feet in nearby buildings. For more detail on WaMu’s real estate portfolio in Seattle and the Bay Area, see GlobeSt.com’s Oct. 1 article titled WaMu Sale To Impact West Coast CRE.