The cutting of 12,500 jobs by Bank of America Corp. should not include any Southeast Missouri employees, according to bank officials.

Representatives of Bank of America made the announcement on Monday, saying cutbacks will take place over the next two years and are a result of its merger with FleetBoston Financial Corp.

The cuts represent about 7 percent of the companies' combined work force of 181,000. But Terry Fransisco, spokesman for Bank of America, said that these cutbacks will not affect workers in the Bank of America branches in Southeast Missouri.

"The cuts are focussed on overlap staff with FleetBoston Financial," Fransisco said. He said that overlap is mostly in the corporate staff areas such as marketing, human resources and the legal department. He also said that most of the jobs being cut will be in the headquarters cities of the two companies, Boston and Charlotte.

He doesn't expect any jobs in Southeast Missouri to be affected.

The job cuts will begin this month.

The completion last week of Bank of America's merger with Fleet created the nation's No. 3 bank, with assets estimated at $966 billion.

The bank has about 35 million customers, about 5,700 branches from coast to coast and 16,500 ATMs. In assets, it trails only Citigroup and the planned merger between Bank One and J.P. Morgan Chase.