More than 1,300 ABN AMRO Mortgage Group employees in Michigan and Florida will lose their jobs by the end of the year as Citigroup integrates the company into its own mortgage subsidiary, CitiMortgage Inc.
Citigroup announced it was acquiring ABN AMRO Mortgage Group and its $224 billion mortgage servicing portfolio in January, and estimated the combined companies would be the fourth-largest mortgage loan servicer and third-largest originator.
Citigroup this week announced plans to cut 770 jobs in Michigan, where ABN AMRO Mortgage Group was headquartered, and 550 jobs in Florida.
In Michigan, 200 workers at ABN AMRO Mortgage Group’s former headquarters near Ann Arbor will be laid off as the headquarters is converted into a wholesale mortgage operations center, the Ann Arbor News reported. The News also reported that Citigroup plans to close two offices in the Detroit area, eliminating another 570 jobs by the end of the year.
In Jacksonville, Fla., 550 employees at a customer servicing and call center were told their office will be closed by the end of the year, the Times-Union reported.
The job cuts at ABN AMRO Mortgage Group were not related to Citigroup’s announcement this week that it was cutting 17,000 jobs worldwide, a Citigroup spokesman said.
ABN AMRO Mortgage Group was a subsidiary of LaSalle Bank Corp. and ABN AMRO Bank N.V., with primary originations business via wholesale lending under the InterFirst brand.
Mortgage lenders announced 6,138 job cuts in the first quarter of 2007, compared with 3,497 in the same period last year, according to a recent report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a New York-based outplacement job consulting firm. The report said there were 12,874 announced job cuts in mortgage lending last year.
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