[{"text": "Bank of New England Corp., seeking to streamline its business after a year of weak earnings and mounting loan problems, said it will sell some operations and lay off 4% of its work force."}, {"text": "The bank holding company also reported that third-quarter profit dropped 41%, to $42.7 million, or 61 cents a share, from the year-earlier $72.3 million, or $1.04 a share."}, {"text": "Among its restructuring measures, the company said it plans to sell 53 of its 453 branch offices and to lay off 800 employees."}, {"text": "Altogether, employment is expected to decline to less than 16,000 from the current level of about 18,000."}, {"text": "Walter Connolly, chairman, said in an interview that the company expects to record pretax gains of $100 million to $125 million from the sale of its leasing operations and of certain financial processing services."}, {"text": "In a prepared statement, the company said it expects to realize those gains before year end."}, {"text": "Nonperforming assets continued to pile up in the latest quarter, rising to $900 million, or 3.52% of loans and leases, from $667 million, or 2.68%, at the end of the second quarter."}, {"text": "Some $170 million of the $233 million increase in nonperforming loans was related to real estate, and roughly three-quarters of that was in the troubled New England market, according to Richard Driscoll, vice chairman."}, {"text": "Mr. Driscoll said that, despite continued weakness in the region's real estate market, Bank of New England expects the rate of increase in nonperforming assets to slow in coming quarters."}, {"text": "Mr. Connolly noted that net third-quarter charge-offs, at $63 million, improved slightly from the $67 million in the second quarter."}, {"text": "And he indicated that more substantial improvement is expected in the next couple of quarters."}, {"text": "The company increased its loan loss reserve to $354 million from $342 million at the end of the second quarter."}, {"text": "Total assets slipped to $31.4 billion, from $32 billion as of June 30."}, {"text": "Among other restructuring measures, the bank said it will close its loan production offices in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia."}, {"text": "The Chicago office figured prominently in the bank's problems earlier this year, when $65 million in loans to Chicago businessman William Stoecker went sour."}, {"text": "In an internal memorandum to employees, Messrs."}, {"text": "Connolly and Driscoll described the restructuring as an effort to continue rationalizing operations assembled during a series of mergers over the past five years."}]