Cal Fed’s Completion Of Merger Results in End of Storied Name By CARLOS MARTINEZ Staff Reporter The California Federal Bank name will cease to exist April 1 when the changeover of all 22 branches in the Valley and surrounding areas to Citibank is completed, company officials said. Citibank is in the process of changing all Cal Fed signs to the Citibank name and integrating the local bank’s accounts into its larger network. Citibank officials said that despite the end of the Cal Fed name, there will be few other noticeable changes for customers. “With Washington Mutual, they already had a presence here and they had to close banks to consolidate,” said Daniel R. Blake, director of Cal State Northridge’s San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center, which tracks the Valley economy. “But in this instance, Citibank didn’t have much of a presence in the state so you won’t see all those closures they had then.” Cal Fed has $25 billion in deposits and $54 billion assets in 334 branches in California and in 17 Nevada branches. Citibank had 84 branches in the state before the acquisition, few of them in the Los Angeles area. An estimated 33 former Cal Fed branches will be closed, but only two are located in the Los Angeles area, with the remaining located in Northern California and Nevada, said Citibank spokeswoman Mary Rische. “The employees affected by the bank closures have been offered jobs within the company, so there will be no layoffs,” she said. Citigroup, the parent of Citibank, acquired Cal Fed’s parent company Golden State Bancorp last year in a deal worth about $5.8 billion.
