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Scott Jagow: The New York Stock Exchange hopes to finish acquiring the American Stock Exchange this fall. But many Amex workers may hope time stops before then. The Wall Street Journal says as many as 75 percent of Amex employees may be laid off after the merger. Alisa Roth reports.

Alisa Roth: As many as 280 workers will likely get pink slips soon after the deal is finalized. James Angel’s a finance professor at Georgetown University’s business school. He says these layoffs are no different than the ones you see after mergers in other industries.

James Angel: They think that they can do something better, faster, cheaper with the combined assets than the other entity could do by itself. And they can do that so much more efficiently. They don’t need as many people as they had before.

Traders and brokers will get to keep their jobs. Though they’ll have to move to a new trading floor within the New York Stock Exchange. Angel says it’s usually the back office employees like accountants who are shown the door in mergers like this. He guesses they’ll try to find new jobs, but with financial services companies laying people off left and right, there isn’t a lot of work to be found on Wall Street right now. And some may decide it’s time to retire. This isn’t the first time the Amex has laid people off recently. It cut nearly 100 people before the sale was announced.

In New York, I’m Alisa Roth for Marketplace.