The Bank of America Corp., the second- largest U.S. bank, on Thursday announced 7,500 job cuts after its acquisition of Countrywide Financial Corp. The Charlotte, North Carolina based bank said that the job cuts would take place nationwide and especially in areas where the companies have significant overlap, such as staff support.

The job cuts would amount to about 3 percent of the combined companies' work forces. At the end of March, Bank of America had about 209,100 employees while Countrywide had about 50,400 employees.

The bank said that it will start notifying the affected workers by the end of the third quarter and will offer severance package in appropriate cases.

Bank of America expects “substantial cost savings” from the merger. The transaction is expected to be completed by July 1.

Yesterday Countrywide's shareholders accepted Bank of America's takeover, originally valued at about $4 billion. Calabasas, California-based Countrywide had already eliminated about 11,000 employees since the middle of 2007 as loan losses began to increase and it had also curtailed offerings of risky loans such as subprime mortgages and "option" adjustable-rate mortgages.

Shareholders of Countrywide are expected to receive 0.1822 of a Bank of America share for each of their shares.