News Summary

If you've lost track of your bank's name, what with all the mergers, be aware that there's another consolidation coming. It's of special significance to Dayton and Cleveland.

Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group is buying National City Bank, which has 45 branches in the Dayton-Springfield area and employs 1,500 people in Miami Twp. at National City's mortgage division. PNC doesn't operate in the Dayton market, so there won't be overlap among its branches (unlike in Cincinnati, where PNC does have a presence). That's good news if you're a National City branch manager or teller.

What will happen with the mortgage operation in Miami Twp. is not certain.

In 2002, PNC sold its mortgage origination business to Washington Mutual, and now it contracts out its loan processing and servicing work to Wells Fargo. That's positive for Miami Twp., in that there's not a duplicative PNC operation in Pittsburgh to compete against. But presumably PNC will be looking at whether it wants to keep contracting out for this work — or shift the tasks that Wells Fargo is doing for it to the Dayton area.

The PNC acquisition was driven by the fact that National City was in deep financial trouble because of its stake in subprime loans. It's carrying a huge number of bad loans, and, as its financial precariousness became better understood, deposits were falling and the feds basically forced it to agree to a takeover. In the end, stockholders lost big, what with share prices falling from $38 per share in March 2007 to $2.23 in the PNC deal.

Now that PNC has gotten a spectacular bargain — some analysts think its federal bailout money will all but pay for the acquisition, though the company says that's not close to being true — the hunt will be on to consolidate operations and create efficiencies.

That ought to be an opportunity for the region and especially Miami Twp., which counts National City as one of its major employers. Local leaders — and state officials, too — need to be making sure PNC executives know how important National City's operations are here, and also asking what needs to happen to create expansion opportunities.

Gov. Ted Strickland's Department of Development is probably paying the most attention to what PNC plans for Cleveland. That's where National City is headquartered, and 27 percent of the company's workforce — an estimated 2,000 employees — are in Cleveland. The news of the sale there is being greeted with foreboding because it's assumed that many of the well-paid headquarter jobs are going to be gone. That doesn't have to be the fate for workers in Miami Twp.

Thanks, in part, to $5.2 billion from the feds' bailout money, PNC will become the country's fifth-largest bank. It has already said that an aggressive cost-cutting campaign will be a priority. In making those plans, it needs to know that National City Mortgage has already been down that path. It's down from 2,200 jobs in October 2007.

Now is the time for visits to Pittsburgh, some get-to-know-you meetings with folks who don't know Dayton or what it offers. What can't happen is for anyone to take the old National City Mortgage's presence for granted.