Wachovia Corp. closing wholesale mortgage facility in Waterbury, Conn

WATERBURY, Conn. -- Wachovia Corp. will shut down its wholesale mortgage operation in Waterbury, a decision that will cost 70 employees their jobs, a company spokeswoman said Monday.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based financial services giant will close its New England regional wholesale mortgage processing site in the Wachovia Mortgage Corp. building at 1 Jefferson Square, said Kasey Emmel, a spokeswoman for Wachovia's Corporate and Investment Banking Group. The wholesale group is one of two regional mortgage divisions in the building, she said. The company's New England regional retail processing site is also housed in the Jefferson Square building.

Emmel said the wholesale mortgage processing company will retain a handful of employees at the Waterbury site. She also said workers in the Waterbury office will be encouraged to apply for jobs at the company's wholesale mortgage processing center in Shelton, though there are not enough openings there to accommodate the entire Waterbury work force.

Waterbury employees have also been encouraged to apply for jobs at wholesale mortgage centers in Providence, Cherry Hill, N.J., Melville, N.Y., and Boston, she said.

The employees losing their jobs have been given 60 days' notice and will receive severance pay based on their tenure with the company, she said.

They were first informed of the company's plans in mid-November, she said.

Wachovia doesn't plan to close its retail mortgage processing operation, which employs about 100 people at Jefferson Square, Wachovia spokeswoman Fran Durst said.

The wholesale mortgage processing operation underwrites and closes mortgage applications received from third-party mortgage brokers in Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington. The retail processing unit handles mortgage applications received from Wachovia bank branches in the same states.

The decision to shut down the Waterbury operation stems from Wachovia's acquisition of San Diego-based AmNet Mortgage Inc. last December. AmNet was the parent of American Mortgage Network, a wholesale mortgage banker with 28 offices across the nation that served more than 7,000 mortgage brokers.

The AmNet acquisition created two third-party wholesale mortgage businesses within Wachovia's corporate structure, a situation the company addressed last July when it decided to merge the two entities, Emmel said. Wachovia officials also decided to retain AmNet's product line, technology and format, and to close the Wachovia wholesale mortgage sites in the three markets where Wachovia and AmNet operations overlapped.

Those three markets were in Chicago, Denver and western Connecticut, where Wachovia's wholesale mortgage processing center in Waterbury overlapped with an AmNet location in Shelton, Emmel said.