Pacific Premier Bancorp Inc. plans to lay off nearly 6% of its workforce at its Irvine headquarters beginning Aug. 1 on the eve of a merger with a Pacific Northwest institution, according to a filing with California’s employment department.

Pacific Premier announced in April that it planned to merge with Columbia Banking System in an all stock deal worth about $2 billion.

The combined companies, which will have about $70 billion in assets once regulators approve the deal, said they plan to complete their merger in the second half of 2025.

In a letter filed with the Employment Development Department on June 25, Ramina Swanson, first vice president in charge of human resources with Pacific Premier, wrote that the bank plans to lay off 78 employees at its headquarters at 17900 Von Karman Ave.

“This mass layoff is expected to be permanent,” Swanson wrote.

The bank declined to comment further on the layoffs and whether affected employees would be rehired when the merger is completed in early August.

At least one banking analyst who’s watching the merger isn’t surprised by the layoffs, most of which are corporate positions.

“When banks merge, they don’t necessarily need two chief credit officers, or two CFOs, so you see those positions going away,” said Tim Coffey, a managing director with Janney Montgomery Scott in Walnut Creek. “When two banks merge, this is where some of the cost savings happen. The redundancies are in those positions.”

A Pacific Premier filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicated that its merger with the Tacoma, Wash.-based banking parent of Umpqua, could result in an estimated $127 million in operational cost savings, or 30% of Pacific Premier’s noninterest expense. These expenses focus on “back-office redundancies with modest expected branch consolidation” and include employee salaries, rent, technology costs and other operating overheads.

“The majority of employees that customers interact with every day are unlikely to be affected by this,” Coffey said.

The layoffs are expected to begin Aug. 1, and continue through November, according to the letter filed by Swanson with the state’s Employment Development Department.

Pacific Premier reported 1,333 employees as of March 31, 2025, according to a report filed by the bank with the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, a central data depository for banks.

It’s unclear what the commercial lender will do with its headquarters building along Von Karman Avenue or whether it will consolidate branch locations once the merger is completed.

The bank has its largest concentration of 44 branches in Southern California, including a dozen in Los Angeles County; nine in Orange County; six in Riverside County; five in San Diego County; and three in San Bernardino County.  A total of 14 branches are located in Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.

Swanson, Vickie Sherman, the bank’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer Vickie Sherman, and Steven Gardner, chairman and chief executive officer of Pacific Premier, did not respond to requests for comment.

Gardner plans to join the board of Columbia after the merger is completed, according to the April 23 announcement of the deal. The CEO has been instrumental in the growth of the bank since he assumed the role of president and CEO in 2000 — later adding the title of chairman — and tasked with transforming the bank.

Today, the bank has more than $18 billion in assets following a flurry of acquisitions over the past decade, including its largest acquisition of Opus Bank in 2020, valued at roughly $1 billion. Pacific Premier was founded originally in 1983 as Life Bank.

The bank’s No. 2 executive, Edward Wilcox, president and chief operating officer, is leaving Aug. 1, according to Swanson’s letter.

Other executives leaving Aug. 1 through November include the chief financial and administration officer, chief appraiser, chief credit officer, chief human resources officer, chief marketing officer, the head of commercial credit and the directors of corporate finance and investor relations.