JPMorgan Chase Losing 49 Chicago Branches to Grocer's Closure

A grocery chain's decision to shutter its Chicago stores will reportedly shrink JPMorgan Chase's (JPM) branch count in the city by 12%.

JPMorgan Chase will lose 49 branches when Dominick's Finer Foods, the Chicago unit of grocery giant Safeway, closes early next year, Crain's Chicago Business reported Thursday. JPMorgan has 52 branches in Dominick's stores; it has struck a deal with the rival Chicago grocery chain Jewel-Osco, which is buying some of the Dominick's locations, to keep three branches when the stores switch over.

Safeway said in October that it would sell or close its 72 Dominick's stores by early next year.

JPMorgan Chase plans to transfer the customer accounts to nearby branches, and will transfer the roughly 200 branch employees to other jobs in its retail network, a spokeswoman said. Chase will have 348 branches in the Chicago area after the closures, Crain's reported.

"We continue to provide our customers with the largest network of branches and ATMs in the Chicago market; in 2013 we opened nine new branches," Sarah Lindstrom, a JPMorgan Chase market manager in Chicago, said. "Also, all of our affected in-store colleagues are moving to other branches to continue serving customers."

JPMorgan Chase is the largest retail bank in Chicago, with about $76 billion in deposits, a 24% market share, at June 30, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. BMO Harris has the second-largest market share, at 12%.

Big banks have recently been repositioning themselves in Chicago's competitive retail market. In October, Citizens Financial Group, the U.S. unit of Royal Bank of Scotland, began looking for a buyer for 106 Chicago branches, which operate as Charter One.

On Wednesday, TCF Financial (TCF) in Wayzata, Minn., said it would close 37 branches inside Chicago-area Jewel-Osco stores, and add 52 branches inside the city's "L" train stations.