Banker & Tradesman file photo

For any Massachusetts banks hoping to lure away former First Republic Bank workers and their client relationships, it appears that next Wednesday could be the magic day.

In the company’s annual investor day presentation Monday, Marianne Lake, JPMorgan Chase’s co-CEO of consumer and community banking, said the bank had committed to giving employees of the troubled bank JPMorgan had bought May 1 “clarity on their status and path forward within 30 days of the acquisition.”

How many of these former First Republic staffers it can retain may prove critical to whether JPMorgan can fulfill its aspirations to turn its rescue of First Republic into a growth opportunity – something Lake and other executives were keenly aware of in their presentations and answers to investor questions as they praised First Republic’s success building a “largely self-sourced” business and its cstomer appeal.

First Republic built a large part of its success by wrapping high and ultra-high net worth clients in high-touch services, an approach that earned the bank immense loyalty from these customers when its finances started to become shaky.

“They all serve clients and many are quarterbacks for clients. We’re working on how  to bring them into our businesses a way that feels natural but preserves the best of what they do where they do have a teamified group of experts. We’re in the last throes of putting that together,” Lake said.

Lake said JPMorgan had “three priority jobs” at the moment: treating former First Republic workers “with respect,” stabilizing and earning back First Republic clients who may have fled elsewhere during the spring’s bank runs and continuing to uphold prudential lending and risk management practices.

When it comes to branches, often a source of staffing reductions during bank mergers, most of the former First Republic branches will likely stay open for now, Lake’s co-CEO Jennifer Piepszak said, with only a relatively small number that would be closed due to proximity to an existing Chase Bank branch. Once JPMorgan completes the systems conversion for its acquisition more may close, Piepszak said, but the bank also hopes to use First Republic’s real estate to help it roll out a new type of branch, to be called a “private client center” and geared towards affluent customers.

Between co-opting First Republic’s branch network and successfully integrating former First Republic staff and customers into its organization, JPMorgan thinks it can see “a meaningful acceleration” of its wealth management business, Piepszak said.

First Republic employees aren’t the only ones being targeted by other banks. Dozens of former employees at Silicon Valley Bank, the second lender with a major Massachusetts presence to fail this spring, were hired away by HSBC in the wake of the bank’s collapse to set up a new unit focused on the startup and tech-sector clients that were SVB’s bread-and-butter. First Republic Bank, the North Carolina-based lender that bought SVB after its March failure, filed a $1 billion lawsuit against HSBC yesterday, according to the Triangle Business Journal. HSBC, First Republic claims, aimed to steal trade secrets and used “high pressure” tactics to convince 42 SVB employees to resign en-masse.