18 - Wells Fargo

Abstract

Wells Fargo & Company was established in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco. This diversified, community-based financial services company provides banking, insurance, investments, mortgage, consumer and commercial finance through more than 8700 branches. The bank has offices in 36 countries and has more than 70 million customers. The bank possesses about 12,500 ATMS. Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States and was ranked Number 29 in Fortune’s 2014 rankings of America’s largest corporations. Wells Fargo Bank is one of the “Big Four” Banks of the United States along with JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. In March 2015, Wells Fargo became the world’s biggest bank by market capitalization. The present-day Wells Fargo was formed as a result of a merger between San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Company and Minneapolis-based Norwest Corporation. In the year 2008, Wells Fargo acquired Charlotte-based Wachovia for $14.8 billion in an all-stock transaction. Wells Fargo had record earnings for the sixth consecutive year in the year 2014. In 2014, Wells Fargo was the most profitable bank in the United States. Wells Fargo processes more than 20,000 customer transactions like account openings or online bill payments every minute. The cross sell strategy of the bank is to increase the number of products the customers use by offering them financial products which satisfy their needs. Wells Fargo is valued using DDM model and relative valuation.