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Wells Fargo today officially unveiled the new brand name for its investment banking and capital markets unit and signaled plans to build a business largely inherited from Charlotte-based Wachovia.
In a news release issued today, Wells Fargo chief executive John Stumpf says the San Francisco-based bank plans to “grow and invest in the business,” which includes Wall Street-style services such as stock and bond underwriting and merger advice for large corporations.
“We have an enormous opportunity to become one of the top customer-focused investment banks in the country by focusing on the basics and on those businesses that directly serve our customers,” Stumpf says in the release.
Wachovia's corporate and investment bank was a source of major losses in the credit crunch that began in 2007, but it's also a provider of high-paying jobs in Charlotte. Wells Fargo has kept a number of top Wachovia investment banking leaders in Charlotte, although the new brand name for the business, as reported by the Observer last month, will be Wells Fargo Securities.
Asked by the Observer in June whether Wells Fargo was warming up to the business, Stumpf said: “There's lots of investment banking that we like a lot, where it starts with a customer.” But he added that he's not a fan of riskier businesses such as the packaging of exotic mortgage-related securities and proprietary trading.
