J.P. Morgan Chase said Wednesday afternoon that it has agreed to buy Bank One Corp. The deal would create a combined mutual fund groups with assets of more than $221 billion, reports the reported the Wall Street Journal, while the two banks would lay claim to more than $700 billion in total assets under management, according to the paper.

JPMorgan Fleming brings $110 billion of mutual fund assets to the table and $527 billion in total assets under management. Banc One's One Group mutual funds claimed $101 billion in fund assets while Bank One Investment Advisors.

Despite the heft of the combined fund business, the $58 billion deal was likely more about retail banking than either bank's mutual fund business.

J.P. Morgan Chase's William B. Harrison will remain as chairman and chief executive officer, and Bank One CEO James Dimon will be president and chief operating officer. Dimon, 47, will be slotted to replace the sixty-year-old Harrison in 2006.

Harrison told reporters that he expects the combination will allow the banks to shed 10,000 of 145,000 workers, although he would not specify where the cuts would be made.

The deal is the second by a bank fund group named in New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's initial complaint against Canary Capital Partners last September. Last year Bank of America, whose NationsFunds were named in the complaint, agreed to buy FleetBoston.

The sale won't mean that baseball fans have to learn a new name for the Arizona Diamondback's Bank One Ballpark. "Permission would have to be sought to change the name," Diamondbacks owner Jerry Colangelo told the Associated Press Wednesday, "and that's not in the cards." He added that the commitment on the naming rights to the stadium run for 30 years and the deal does not allow J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. to change the naming-rights agreement.  

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