By Associated Press
Birmingham, AL – Special shareholder meetings today (Tuesday) are the next step in the merger of banking giants AmSouth and Regions, creating one of the nation's top ten banks and reshaping Birmingham's business community. The companies plan shareholder meetings at separate locations in Birmingham to tally shareholders' merger ballots. With no opposition from large shareholders, the meetings are expected to be a formality in the ten (b) billion dollar deal. After the vote, Birmingham will be home to just one megabank. And what will follow likely involve thousands of job cuts, closed branches and empty offices. The merger will create a bank with two-thousand branches, 140 (b) billion dollars in assets, and more than one-thousand teller machines. The merger was announced in May.