Regional banking powerhouse PNC Financial Services is jumping into the Southeastern market in a big way by acquiring Raleigh-based RBC Bank for $3.45 billion.

The deal announced Monday will inevitably lead to job cuts at RBC's Raleigh headquarters and elsewhere, but less so than if there was significant overlap between the operations of the two banks. The only markets where the two banks both have branches are in Florida.

Selling RBC Bank is an admission by its corporate parent, Royal Bank of Canada, that investing at least $4.6 billion in its U.S. retail banking business over the last decade hasn't paid off. The ailing economy and slumping real estate market have triggered heavy losses at RBC.

"You never like to do something that you're not highly successful at," said RBC Bank CEO Jim Westlake, "and we certainly feel that we did not make a success of our foray into banking here."

Pittsburgh-based PNC is for the most part moving into virgin territory with the acquisition of RBC's 424 branches in six states. When the deal is completed, PNC will have 2,870 branches - more than all but four banks. PNC expects to close the sale in March 2012, which is when it plans to convert RBC's branches to the PNC name.

"You will be seeing us add a lot of products and services that weren't in the RBC kit," PNC CEO James Rohr said in a phone interview.

PNC anticipates cutting $230 million in annual costs at RBC "through operational and administrative efficiency improvements."

No decisions have been made on how many job cuts that would entail. RBC, which employs about 5,000 people, including 500 in Raleigh, already has cut hundreds of jobs as part of its effort to turn around the business.

Analysts said they don't expect PNC to implement super-sized job cuts.

"I don't seeing them firing a lot of people," said Richard Bove of Rochdale Securities. "I could be wrong, but I don't see it."

Westlake said he will continue to run RBC until the deal closes. He also is the head of international banking and insurance for Royal Bank of Canada and will continue in that role once PNC takes over.

Rohr said PNC plans to minimize the number of people it lets go through attrition and by retraining employees whose positions are eliminated to handle other roles.

"A lot of the expenses come out of the technology side, because we don't have to maintain two sets of systems," he said.

Rohr also stressed that PNC will rely on RBC's workers.

"We need all the customer-facing people," he said, referring to employees who work in the branches and others, such as commercial loan officers, who work with businesses. "As you know, we don't have operations in that part of the woods."

RBC's operations center in Rocky Mount, where employees are involved in functions such as information technology and mortgage processing, also is part of PNC's future.

"We need Rocky Mount," Rohr said. "We are going to maintain a significant operation there, because we don't have an operations center in the Southeast."

Rocky Mount has more than 1,000 RBC employees. Most of them work in the operations center; RBC also has eight branches in Rocky Mount.

The PNC-RBC deal includes the naming rights to the Raleigh sports arena that is home to the Carolina Hurricanes and N.C. State University's basketball team.

"As you know, there are ballparks and football stadiums and hockey rinks all across America where the names have changed as a result of acquisitions," said Westlake.