M&T Bank Corp. will close 29 branches - including three former Allfirst Financial Inc. bank branches in Maryland - between August and November, as part of its continuing plan to streamline, the Buffalo-based bank said yesterday.
The three Maryland closures are two Hagerstown branches and one in Laurel, leaving 158 M&T branches in the state. The other 26 branches are in Pennsylvania.
No jobs will be cut, and no further branch closings are planned, said spokesman Philip Hosmer.
"This is it," Hosmer said. "This takes us into November. It's the whole plan."
M&T completed its acquisition of Baltimore-based Allfirst, in a deal valued at $3.1 billion, on April 1. M&T said then that it would cut some jobs and close some branches to cut costs and streamline the merged organization.
M&T bought Allfirst from its former parent, Allied Irish Banks PLC of Dublin, Ireland. AIB received 26.7 million shares of M&T common stock, plus $886 million in cash, in exchange for all of Allfirst's common stock.
The Irish bank ended up a minority shareholder in M&T, with a 22.5 percent stake in the merged company. The deal transformed M&T from the nation's 26th largest bank to No. 18.
With the deal, however, came some duplication - situations where M&T branches were within a few blocks of one another, or even across the street, the bank said. M&T said it's closing the 29 branches to fix that.
The Hagerstown branches are standalone locations, and the Laurel branch is in a Weis Markets store, the bank said.
The employees from all three bank branches will be transferred to other M&T branches.
Allfirst signs won't be swapped for the M&T nameplate until the July 4th holiday weekend.
As part of its post-merger, cost-cutting campaign, M&T announced it would fire a total of 1,132 workers - including 657 in Maryland - in three stages. The first 346 employees, including 204 in Maryland, worked their last day April 1.
M&T has said it will cut another 144 workers after the July 4th conversion, and the final 642 in the months after that changeover is finished. Those slated for layoffs were informed in January.
Last year, a currency-trading scandal shackled Allfirst with $691.2 million in losses.
