BankAmerica Corp.’s top officer in Southern California,...

BankAmerica Corp.’s top officer in Southern California, Vice Chairman James P. Miscoll, confirmed that he will retire July 1 after 30 years with the bank.

Miscoll’s departure from the San Francisco-based parent of Bank of America had been expected in the wake of its pending acquisition of Security Pacific Corp. in Los Angeles.

Robert H. Smith, Security Pacific’s chief executive, will assume Miscoll’s role as the bank’s top officer in Southern California as part of the merger agreement. It also calls for Smith to serve as BankAmerica president and chief operating officer under Chief Executive Richard M. Rosenberg.

Tom Decker, an executive vice president with the bank, will take on the BankAmerica community and business development functions handled by Miscoll.

Miscoll, 57, confirmed that the primary reason he is leaving is because Smith is taking over the senior officer functions as called for in the merger deal, but said that he endorses the merger. He added that he was eligible to retire anyway and will receive both retirement and severance packages.

Miscoll is one of the few top-level officers at BankAmerica whose career survived the turmoil the bank has experienced the past 10 years. During that time, BankAmerica went from being an international leader to a near-failure in the mid-1980s, then bounced back in the late 1980s as one of the nation’s strongest financial institutions.