An undetermined number of Allfirst Financial Inc. employees will learn in mid-January whether they will be dismissed after the bank's takeover by M&T; Bank Corp.

Some of those workers, however, will be asked to stay on until midyear - perhaps longer - to help with Allfirst's conversion into M&T;, officials with Buffalo-based M&T; said yesterday.

"An important priority for us is to communicate as quickly as possible any changes that will affect employees," said C. Michael Zabel, M&T;'s vice president of corporate communications.

Zabel said M&T; doesn't yet know how many of Allfirst's roughly 6,000 jobs will be eliminated.

Allied Irish Banks PLC of Dublin, Ireland, agreed in September to sell its Allfirst subsidiary to M&T.; The $3.1 billion deal will make M&T; the nation's 18th-largest banking company. Allied Irish will have a 22.5 percent stake in the new entity after the deal's consummation, which should occur before the end of the first quarter, Zabel said.

In February, Allfirst was scandalized when the bank uncovered currency-trading losses that would eventually reach $691.2 million. The former currency trader responsible for the loss, John M. Rusnak, pleaded guilty in October to one count of bank fraud. He will be sentenced next month.

Viewed as a well-managed bank, M&T; has a record of successfully folding acquisitions into its existing operations. To do that with Allfirst, both M&T; and analysts say, the acquiring bank will have to cut costs, in part through job reductions.

M&T; plans to retain bank tellers, branch managers and other Allfirst employees who deal directly with customers, achieving its cost-reduction goals by paring back-office positions. While M&T; has said it will slash operating expenses by 17 percent at Allfirst - creating savings of $60 million in 2003 and $100 million in 2004 - analysts say that guidance doesn't give them enough information to say how many jobs will be sacrificed to the cost-cutter's scythe.

"Most of the job cuts will be back-office jobs - administration, management [for instance]," said Mark Fitzgibbon, an analyst with Sandler O'Neill & Partners in New York City. "They very likely will keep most of the branch jobs. Obviously, that's very good news, since most of the people are out in the branches."

On the negative side, however, is Allfirst's lackluster financial performance - particularly when viewed alongside that of M&T;, Fitzgibbon said.

Fitzgibbon pointed to a measure known as revenue per employee, which is one means of assessing how efficiently one company uses its work force compared with another in the same business.

While M&T; generates about $53,750 of revenue per employee, Allfirst brings in about $15,000 - or less than a third of what M&T; does, Fitzgibbon said.

That doesn't mean M&T; will slash two-thirds of Allfirst's work force. But it hints that M&T;'s tendency of cutting costs more than it initially promises could hold true with Allfirst: Instead of reducing operating expenses by 17 percent, the cuts could fall more in the middle of the 20 percent to 45 percent range that has been typical when M&T; buys another bank, Fitzgibbon said.

That assumption may be too much of a leap to make with Allfirst, according to M&T.;

"This is an unusual situation," Zabel said.

Usually, when M&T; buys out a bank, it converts the newly acquired branches to the M&T; name either immediately upon - or soon after - closing the deal. But Allfirst branches will keep their existing name until the entire network can be converted, probably around mid-2003, although M&T; says it has no firm timetable.

It's that long lag time that makes the Allfirst deal so unusual, according to Zabel. For the conversion to go smoothly, many of the workers who will receive job-loss notifications on or around Jan. 15 will be asked to stay on until the conversion is completed -some of them for months beyond that, Zabel said.

In fact, there are actually three categories of Allfirst employees who will be losing their jobs: those who will leave 60 days after receiving notice, but before the conversion is completed; those who will be asked to stay on until the conversion is done; and those who will be asked to remain in place even beyond that time, Zabel said.

The bank has held about 70 "town meetings" between upper-level executives and Allfirst workers in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington.

Terminated employees will be permitted to apply for other M&T; openings, though that typically involves relocation.