CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Wachovia Corp. is making progress with its postmerger "to do" list, but the company's merger chief says the real test will come this summer and fall as the company begins converting branches and key systems.
"We'll have a major merger conversion about every 30 days," David Carroll said in an interview Friday.
Wachovia, has 969 systems and wants to get that down to about 800, will convert its mortgage and trust operations in the second quarter and its loan system in the third. In November it will begin converting its deposit systems when it consolidates branches in Florida. Other branches will be converted by the summer of 2003, Mr. Carroll said.
The company has completed "70% to 75%" of decisions on hiring and firing, Mr. Carroll said. The cutbacks have yet to be felt in branches, where conversions are not set to begin until this fall in Florida. Nor have they been felt in back-room operations; Wachovia still runs parallel systems from the two predecessor companies.
When the merger of First Union and Wachovia was announced nearly a year ago, executives promised that 7,000 jobs would be cut. So far about 1,900 have been eliminated, mostly by attrition.
Wachovia, which now has about 84,000 employees, said in its 10K filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission that 770 employees were fired or notified in 2001 that the merger eventually would cost them their jobs.
Mr. Carroll said 339 layoffs were in centralized functions such as human resources, finance, marketing, corporate communications and real estate management.
Another 262 people were laid off from Wachovia's corporate and investment bank, which may be the furthest along in integration. The company kept much of the old First Union Securities intact and renamed it Wachovia Securities.
The company also chose First Union's retail brokerage back-office systems over those of the old IJL Wachovia, and plans to cut another 400 positions when that conversion is completed this summer.
Mr. Carroll reiterated previous projections that Wachovia expects to eliminate another 2,500 jobs this year.
This week customers of branches from Florida to Connecticut will begin receiving the first of a planned 10 million pieces of mail updating them on the merger's progress.
Mr. Carroll shares his duties with Robert McCoy, the former Wachovia chief financial officer. Together, they are overseeing systems conversions, branch consolidations, employee reassignments, and product decisions.
Other tasks include the ordering and placement of 75,000 signs bearing the new logo unveiled Thursday to the "choreography and scheduling" of 1.8 million hours of employee training.
"We're in the execution phase of everything," Mr. Carroll said.
He and his colleagues are under less pressure than in previous First Union mergers, he said, because the merger partners gave themselves "a large window to do this." And First Union, which adopted the Wachovia name after the merger, paid only a small 6% premium when it bought Wachovia.
