US – State Street Corp. is to cut around 1,000 jobs as it consolidates its 1.5 billion dollar acquisition of Deutsche Bank’s global securities services division.

“The company expects to reduce its overall workforce, primarily in the US, over a 12-18 month period beginning in June 2003, by approximately 1,000 employees,” State Street, the world's largest asset manager, said in a statement.

It plans to close the former Deutsche Bank operations in Jersey City, New Jersey and Nashville, Tennessee in the third quarter of 2004. Client service and client management will move to New York where the company will consolidate its operations in new premises in lower Manhattan.

It said the “scope and scale” of the combined operations in the US will provide significant benefits to clients – extra resources, and efficiencies in service and product delivery.

Edinburgh will continue to be State Street’s centre for fund administration, performance measurement and securities operations. The city will also be the site for its European continuous back-up centre for securities operations.

London will remain a primary investment management centre while Dublin will see the establishment of a “significant” financial centre.

In Germany, State Street will aim to build on the Depotbank business it has acquired through the Deutsche purchase.

Jeff Conway, State Street’s managing director of investor services UK, said in an interview that the rationalisation mostly relates to the US. “It’s all about future growth in Europe,” he says. Asked about possible job cuts in Europe, he says: “I don’t have any plans to go down that path.”

Boston-based State Street has 6.2 trillion dollars in assets under custody and 763 billion dollars in assets under management.