Bank merger will result in 76 Riverhead jobs being lost
A merger between Suffolk County National Bank and Connecticut-based People’s United Bank will result in 76 employees losing their jobs at the Riverhead headquarters on Second Street and Griffing Avenue.
The layoffs are the result of the recently approved $402 million sale of Suffolk Bancorp, SCNB’s holding company, to People’s United Bank, which was approved by shareholders in mid-October. The merger is still awaiting approval by federal regulators.
Word of the layoffs came via the state Department of Labor on Oct. 28 through what is known as a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification. The WARN notice is required whenever a company is laying off more than 50 employees.
“There’s going to be, it looks like, 76 SCNB employees who will not be offered positions with People’s United Bank, and that will commence in the latter part of January,” said SCNB Chief Financial Officer Brian Finneran on Wednesday in a telephone interview.
“Some will be here a little bit longer,” he said. “Those jobs are all in what I would characterize as back office and administrative positions. They are mostly in technology, operations and finance. Unfortunately, this is what happens with merger and acquisition activities, particularly in the banking industry, but probably in almost any industries as well.”
The WARN notice indicates that the layoffs will occur during a 14-day period beginning on Jan. 27, 2017. It will involve 65 positions at the Second Street headquarters and 11 at the office on 206 Griffing Ave.
People’s United and SCNB announced the merger plans last June. SCNB was formed in Riverhead 126 years ago on Feb. 18, 1890 and now has 27 locations and $2.1 billion in assets.
People’s United, chartered in 1842 as Bridgeport Savings Bank and renamed People’s United Bank in 2007, has more than 400 locations, although most of the ones on the East End are located in supermarkets.
(Photo credit: Barbaraellen Koch, file)
