Even excluding onetime items, the results substantially missed Wall Street estimates, and shares sank to mid-1991 levels in premarket trading.

"These bottom-line results are disappointing and unacceptable," chairman Lanty Smith said in a statement. "While to some degree they reflect industry headwinds and weaker macroeconomic conditions, they also reflect performance for which we at Wachovia accept responsibility."

Wachovia, the nation's fourth-largest bank by assets, is the largest bank in the Philadelphia area, with 21 percent of deposits. It has 207 Philadelphia-area branches; 6,401 of 120,000 Wachovia employees are based in the Philadelphia region.

The company did not say where the layoffs would occur.

And there was no indication of whether, or how, another Philadelphia-area Wachovia presence - the Wachovia Center, for which the bank has naming rights - could be affected. (The Wachovia Spectrum is to be demolished to make way for a hotel, retail and entertainment complex; the company has had no comment on how its naming rights there would be affected.)

The bank says it lost the equivalent of $4.20 per share in the April-June period. In the same timeframe last year, the bank earned $2.34 billion, or $1.22 per share.

Excluding a goodwill impairment of $6.1 billion and merger-related and restructuring charges of $128 million, Wachovia lost $2.67 billion, or $1.27 per share. Second-quarter results include the bank's October acquisition of A.G. Edwards Inc.

Analysts on average expected a loss of 78 cents per share on revenue of almost $8.4 billion.

On July 9, Wachovia had projected a $2.6 billion to $2.8 billion quarterly loss, equal to $1.23 to $1.33 per share, excluding goodwill items.

The Charlotte-based bank cut its quarterly dividend to 5 cents per share from 37.5 cents, which will conserve approximately $700 million of capital per quarter.

During the quarter, the bank boosted its provision for loan losses to $5.57 billion from $179 million a year ago, and added $4.2 billion to its reserves for bad loans.

Wachovia has been suffering from its 2006 acquisition of Golden West Financial Corp. The bank paid roughly $25 billion for the California mortgage lender known for exotic loans.

The so-called pick-a-payment loans, which Wachovia inherited from Golden West, have proved a headache for the bank and a lightning rod for shareholders, defaulting at higher rates than other mortgages.

Wachovia recently discontinued offering the pick-a-payment loan option, which allows customers to pay a less-than-full interest payment on all new home loans. The bank also had hired the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to conduct an analysis of its loan portfolio and advise it on strategic alternatives.

Late yesterday, Wachovia announced plans to leave the wholesale mortgage lending business.

Big banks, such as Bank of America Corp. and National City Corp., have stopped making loans through brokers entirely, relying instead on their loan officers. National City said it was forced to do so by a continuing downturn in loan demand, while Bank of America said it saw better "long-term opportunity" in working through its own loan officers.

Wachovia spokesman Don Vecchiarello said in a statement that the company "recognized some opportunities to reposition our business," given the current market conditions.

The same day, it named a former Treasury undersecretary and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive, Robert Steel, as chief executive, replacing the ousted Ken Thompson. Within a week of Steel's being on the job, the bank's shares tumbled to a new 17-year low.

In premarket trading today, the stock shed nearly 12 percent to $11.80. That level would mark the stock's lowest price since roughly June 1991.