Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 14, 1993 TAG: 9301140067
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: C5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
500 JOBS REPORTED ON WAY
First Union Corp. is considering moving as many as 500 jobs to Roanoke as part of its acquisition of Dominion Bankshares, a North Carolina newspaper reported Wednesday.But the banking company declined to comment directly on the Charlotte Observer story. Sandra Deem, spokeswoman for First Union, said the company is looking at redeployment of jobs on a multistate basis.
It's not necessarily true, she said, that jobs will leave one place and go to one other place.
First Union, based in Charlotte, is studying job relocations in terms of the most efficient operation for the company as a whole, Deem said.
First Union said in mid-December that it intends to terminate the jobs of 1,288 Dominion employees, including about 850 in the Roanoke Valley, after its March 31 acquisition of Dominion Bankshares Corp.
The company also has said it is studying the possibility of moving some positions into the nearly 830,000 square feet of office space that Dominion owns or leases long-term in Roanoke.
Benjamin P. Jenkins III, president of First Union National Bank of Virginia, said last week that he expected small numbers of jobs to shift here from time to time from other First Union locations.
Jenkins predicted that First Union will fill Dominion's vacant space primarily through growth and other acquisitions over the next few years.
The Charlotte newspaper said First Union is expected to tell employees soon that some operations are being moved to Roanoke. Those jobs are expected to be in the consumer loan division, the loan collection department service center, bank card operations and some other operations, the story said.
Deem said the consumer loan division is in Charlotte, but loan collections are handled in offices scattered over several states.
First Union's bank card center is in Charlotte; its bank card application center is in Augusta, Ga.
First Union has operations in the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida. The merger with Dominion will put it also in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Both banks have offices in Tennessee.