Merrill CEO John Thain sounded the alarm today that workers at his bank have yet to feel the full bite of its layoffs, noting that thousands more positions will be eliminated before the bloodletting can be stemmed. Here, his comments this morning from Dubai as the bank lays plans to be absorbed by Bank of America in a $50 billion takeover.

Merrill Lynch & Co. Chief Executive Officer John Thain said he expects "thousands" of job losses from the bank's $50 billion takeover by Bank of America Corp.

Most of the cuts will fall in information technology, operations and finance, Thain, 53, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Dubai today. Jobs won't be eliminated in the fixed income and commodities divisions, he said.

"We haven't mapped it out in terms of actual number of people, but we are committed to saving $7 billion across the combined platforms, and that will be a challenge," Thain said. "Between our two companies it will be clearly thousands of jobs."

Thain turned to Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis last month after a crisis of confidence in Wall Street firms forced Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. into bankruptcy and raised speculation Merrill could be vulnerable. The firm has already cut more than 5,000 jobs in the past 18 months, taking its headcount to about 60,000, in an effort to rein in costs as credit markets froze.

Thain said he expects those markets to thaw over the next six to twelve months after governments in Europe and the U.S. injected trillions of dollars into banks last week to avert a financial crisis. The U.S. government will inject $125 billion into banks, including $25 billion into Bank of America, which is based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and New York-based Merrill.

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