Special Report: Global Financial Crisis

People walk past the JPMorgan Chase & Co building in New York, March 17, 2008. (Xinhua/Reuters file photo) Photo Gallery>>>

    NEW YORK, Feb. 26 (Xinhua) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. said Thursday it will eliminate about 12,000 jobs as part of its takeover of the failed Washington Mutual.

    Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said the cut was a precautionary move to ensure that the company has financial flexibility should economic conditions worsen. The move will save the company about 5 billion U.S. dollars per year.

    JPMorgan acquired the assets of Seattle-based WaMu, the largest bank ever to fail in U.S. history, at the end of September.

    JPMorgan's decision came followed the release of the Labor Department's worse-than-expected job data.

    The government said Thursday that first-time requests for unemployment benefits jumped to 667,000 from the previous week's figure of 631,000 and the number of Americans continuing to receive unemployment benefits has topped 5.1 million.

Global Job Cuts

·Panasonic to cut 15,000 jobs

·Starbucks to cut 6,700 jobs

·SAP to cut 3,000 jobs

·Intel to cut up to 6,000 jobs

·Caterpillar to cut 20,000 jobs

·Warner Bros. to cut 800 jobs

· Ericsson to cut 5,000 jobs

· Sony to cut 8,000 jobs

· Valeo to cut 5,000 jobs

· Chanel to cut 200 jobs

· Volvo Cars to cut 3,400 jobs

· Credit Suisse to cut 5,300 jobs

· Rolls-Royce to cut 2,000 jobs

·Survey: 1/3 of NZ companies expect to cut jobs

·Official: Over 20,000 Indians lose overseas jobs

· Indonesia to cut 40,000 jobs

·UK finance sector to cut 15,000 jobs

·India IT industry to cut 50,000 jobs

· South Korea to cut jobs in public sector