Amsouth Bancorp. will cut 150 commercial banking jobs from its Birmingham, Ala., headquarters as it moves that business to Nashville.
The move is expected to affect back-office employees, who were told of the decision last week. Less than a month ago Amsouth said it would cut 10% of its work force, 1,400 employees, as part of its integration with First American Corp.
Amsouth is expected to buy First American in October, and their operations are to be combined in the first quarter.
The Alabama company's commercial banking group would wind up with about 950 employees in all, and 26,000 commercial customers. The two companies' corporate loan portfolios total more than $12 billion.
Amsouth also said Claire Tucker, who has been president of First American corporate banking, will be commercial banking president in Nashville. She would report to Sloan Gibson, chief financial officer for Amsouth and head of its finance, commercial, and credit groups.
Analysts said moving the commercial banking headquarters to Nashville would leverage First American's presence in this area.
"Middle-market commercial banking will be strengthened by the First American team," said Jacqueline Reeves, a banking analyst at Putnam, Lovell, de Guardiola in New York.
Amsouth has already made 160 of the job cuts for which plans were announced this month, and all of the employees who will lose their jobs have been notified, spokesman Jim Underwood said. Many of those jobs will be cut between October and February, he said.
Despite the back-office cuts, Amsouth's overall commercial banking work force in Birmingham will rise by 100 when the deal closes, Mr. Underwood said.
Amsouth announced June 1 that it would buy First American for $6.3 billion in stock.
The deal would solidify the Birmingham company's position in Tennessee and Mississippi and double its asset size, to $42 billion. It now has 680 branches in nine states in the Southeast and claims the largest network of ATMs in the region, with 1,350.
The merger would also bring Amsouth additional resources in the fee- based investment product business. First American owns the third-party investment and insurance product marketers Invest and Investment Centers of America.
How First American's investment businesses will be linked with Amsouth's "hasn't been spelled out yet," Ms. Reeves said, "but these are synergies."
