Bank of America to cut 3,000 support jobs across Latin America, Asia

By Peter Rudegeair (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp said on Wednesday that it will close three foreign offices and eliminate about 3,000 jobs over the next nine to 12 months in an effort to simplify its global operations. Offices that provide technological and operational support in San Jose, Costa Rica; Guadalajara, Mexico, and Taguig City, Philippines, will be shut down, a Bank of America spokesman said in an emailed statement. All three centers were part of a nonbank subsidiary called BA Continuum that provided back-office, customer and technological support to divisions such as mortgage banking and insurance. BA Continuum maintains another location in India that will remain open. The Bank of America spokesman said the company wanted to give the affected employees as much advance notice of the layoffs as possible to enable them to look for new jobs. Some of the duties performed by these workers will eventually be moved to other locations, the spokesman said. The closures should not have any impact on Bank of America's capital markets businesses in Latin America, the spokesman added. Wednesday's job cuts are the latest in a series at the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company. Bank of America employed 242,117 full-time workers at the end of 2013, down 9 percent from the 267,190 full-time staffers it had on its payroll at the end of 2012. (Fixes typo in paragraph five to read 'workers') (Reporting by Peter Rudegeair; Editing by Jan Paschal)