BofA Plans to Cut 10% of Branches: Report

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Bank of America(BAC) plans to trim about 10% of the bank's 6,100 branch network, a report says.

CEO Kenneth Lewis discussed the plans during a meeting last week, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing people familiar with the conversation. Liam McGee, president of Bank of America's consumer and small-business bank, also said branch closings are part of the plans but said it would be premature to specify how many locations could be closed, these people said.

The reason behind the closings is that online and mobile banking are taking transactions away from traditional branches, McGee said, according to the people. The Bank of America executives didn't say when the closings would take place, the Journal reports.

Bank of America had 4,700 branches in 1998 and increased those through a series of large acquisitions. The bank holds 12.2% of all U.S. deposits, according to SNL Financial, followed by Wells Fargo(WFC) and JPMorgan Chase(JPM), the newspaper reports.

--Reported by Joseph Woelfel in New York.

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