NEWTON, Mass. -- Shareholders from Bank of America and FleetBoston gave their stamp of approval to a $47 billion merger deal Wednesday.

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Pam Cross Reports On Merger Compare Banks Boston's Bank History

NewsCenter 5's Pam Cross reported that the Bank of America takeover may be a costly acquisition for Fleet employees.

Many corporate mergers have resulted in layoffs, but the number of possible losses in New England is hefty.

As many as 13,000 jobs could be eliminated by the Fleet/Bank of America merger, according to The Wall Street Journal. The two banks have a combined workforce of 181,000 employees and the cuts would represent 7 percent of the total.

"There is some job loss, but the great news is that the agreement that we have from Bank of America is that we will have the same number of jobs in New England after the merger as we do before the merger. We have about 19,000 employees in New England now and (will have) 19,000 employees in the future," said Fleet President Gene McQuade.

Although Bank of America is not in this region, the two banks have a large number of overlapping branches that can be consolidated. A big chunk of savings will probably come from duplicate operations and processes.

"If you work in human resources or information technology or finance or accounting or other kinds of back office functions, not facing the customer functions, then that is where they tend to look at saving opportunities," said Babson College's Peter Cohan.

A spokesman from Bank of America said, "There will be job cuts as a result of the merger, however we have not provided that information ... "

Bank of America's President Ken Lewis promised investors he would find $250 million in cost savings this year.

It is not clear if workers at Bank of America or Fleet employees will suffer the majority of the cuts, but staff at both companies will likely feel the pain.

The merger will create the nation's third largest bank.