(BN) Bank of America Said to Seek 20% Cut in Consumer-Unit Costs With Job Trims 

Aug. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp., the biggest U.S. lender, may try to cut costs by 20 percent in consumer banking with measures that include thousands more job cuts, said two people with direct knowledge of the firm’s efforts.

Executives working on the cost-cutting plan, dubbed Project New BAC, set preliminary goals during their review of deposit, mortgage and card units, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. The consumer businesses comprise the largest division with about $30 billion in expenses last year.

“They’ve got to right-size expenses to match known revenues, and there’s no other way to do it but with job cuts,” said Greg Donaldson, chairman of Evansville, Indiana-based Donaldson Capital Management, a firm with $500 million in assets that sold its Bank of America stock this year.

Chief Executive Officer Brian T. Moynihan is under pressure to reduce expenses after the bank’s shares plunged almost 50 percent this year. He’s booked about $30 billion in costs tied to home loans since replacing Kenneth D. Lewis in 2010, mostly because of the 2008 takeover of subprime lender Countrywide Financial Corp. The company’s workforce of 287,839 at midyear was the largest among U.S. banks.

The savings are likely to be achieved in part through thousands of job cuts beyond the 6,000 disclosed so far this year, said the people. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender may eliminate at least 10,000 positions, the Wall Street Journal reported. Scott Silvestri, a Bank of America spokesman, declined to comment on Project New BAC, the initials in the company’s stock ticker.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-19/bank-of-america-said-to-seek-20-cut-in-consumer-unit-costs-with-job-trims.html

as they become commercial banks, only. I can see that coming quickly. Small depositors will be left with credit unions, often far away from their homes, hard on old folks and poor folks who aren't online.

That's not a bad thing, actually, for most of the rest of us.