History of Wells Fargo

Continuing the Norwest tradition of making numerous smaller acquisitions each year, Wells Fargo acquired 13 companies during 1999 with total assets of $2.4 billion.

[1] Wells Fargo also acquired First Commerce Bancshares, Inc. of Lincoln, Nebraska, which had $2.9 billion in assets, and a Seattle-based regional brokerage firm, Ragen MacKenzie Group Incorporated.

[8] In June 2007, John Stumpf was named chief executive officer of the company, and Richard Kovacevich remained as chairman.

[10][11] On October 4, 2008, a New York state judge issued a temporary injunction blocking the transaction from going forward while the situation was sorted out.

[14] The merger created a coast-to-coast super-bank with $1.4 trillion in assets and 48 million customers and expanded Wells Fargo's operations into nine Eastern and Southern states.

In contrast, the Citigroup deal would have resulted in a substantial overlap, since both banks' operations were heavily concentrated in the East and Southeast.

[15] The proposed merger was approved by the Federal Reserve as a $12.2 billion all-stock transaction on October 12 in an unusual Sunday order.

On October 28, 2008, Wells Fargo was the recipient of $25B of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act Federal bail-out in the form of a preferred stock purchase.

[22] In 2016, the Wells Fargo cross-selling scandal led to the resignation of CEO John Stumpf and resulted in fines of $185 million by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.