M&T Bank plans to cut 44 jobs in Massachusetts as it completes its purchase of People’s United Bank. That’s in addition to 50 jobs eliminated in Vermont and 747 in Connecticut.
An M&T spokesman said Tuesday there will be little to no impact to customer-facing positions at the bank. About 92% of People’s United Bank’s Massachusetts workforce will be retained.
A majority of the staff reductions will take place in 2022, the spokesman said. M&T told Connecticut labor officials last week that the job cuts will begin in October 2021 and will be completed by March 20, 2022.
Of the 747 Connecticut jobs to be eliminated, 661 are in Bridgeport, which is People’s United Bank’s headquarters now and will be a regional headquarters for M&T after the sale. The 50 jobs expected to be lost in Vermont are at a processing center in Brattleboro.
M&T said it has 1,500 job openings across its entire footprint and the employees losing their jobs in New England will have first priority in hiring. M&T said it intends to leverage remote and hybrid working arrangements as it emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.
In February, M&T, based in Buffalo, New York, announced plans to buy People’s United Bank for $7.6 billion. After the deal is finalized later this year, the Peoples’ United name will disappear and all its branches will be M&T Bank locations.
None of this involves the unrelated PeoplesBank, which is headquartered in Holyoke. PeoplesBank remains an independent cooperative.
People’s United Bank locally is the result of a series of mergers and branch closings and includes parts of United Cooperative Bank, once headquartered in West Springfield, and the Bank of Western Massachusetts, which was in Springfield. People’s United Bank bought United Financial Bancorp, the holding company for United Bank, for $759 million in 2019.
People’s United Bank has 64 branches in Massachusetts. M&T doesn’t have any branches here.
In Connecticut, M&T told the state Department of Labor there would be layoffs at the People’s United Bank office at 855 Enfield St., Enfield. An M&T spokesman said eight jobs would be eliminated but 85% of the staff there would be retained.
People’s United Bank has two other locations in Enfield, a freestanding one on Hazard Avenue and a location in Stop & Shop.
Overall, M&T said it will retain about 80% of People’s United employees, including what it described as “substantially” all People’s United branch employees, including those who work in its Stop & Shop branches.
The new M&T company will have an estimated $200 billion in assets, more than 1,100 branches and 2,000-plus ATMs in 12 states from Maine to Virginia.
M&T is a publicly traded corporation. Its stock, MTB on the New York Stock Exchange, traded at $135.04 Tuesday afternoon, up 2.1% or $2.78 on the day.
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