Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational banking and financial services holding company headquartered in San Francisco, California, with "hubquarters" throughout the country. It is the fourth largest bank in the U.S. by assets and the largest bank by market capitalization. Wells Fargo is the second largest bank in deposits, home mortgage servicing, and debit cards. In 2011, Wells Fargo was the 23rd largest company in the United States. Wells Fargo is one of the "Big Four banks" of the United States, along with JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup—its main competitors. The company operates accross 35 countries and has over 70 million customers globally.
Wells Fargo in its present form is a result of a merger between San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Company and Minneapolis-based Norwest Corporation in 1998 and the subsequent 2008 acquisition of Charlotte-based Wachovia. Following the mergers, the company transferred its headquarters to Wells Fargo's headquarters in San Francisco and merged its operating subsidiary with Wells Fargo's operating subsidiary in Sioux Falls.
Norwest Corporation was a banking and financial services company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. By the end of 1997, Norwest had become the 11th largest bank in the United States with total assets of $88.54 billion. With bank branches in 16 states, Norwest had the largest contiguous bank franchise in the nation. Its strongest markets were in Minnesota, Texas, Colorado, and Iowa. Having entered the Texas market only a few years previous, Norwest had built up a $10 billion presence there by buying 33 bank and trust outfits. Norwest Mortgage was national in scope, while Norwest Financial covered 49 states, along with additional operations in Guam, Saipan, Canada, the Caribbean, and Central America.
Net income had reached $1.35 billion by 1997. Norwest had grown into this position of strength without completing any of the blockbuster mergers that shook up the banking industry in the 1990s, but in June 1998 the bank merged with Wells Fargo & Company. Although Norwest was the nominal survivor, the merged company took the Wells Fargo name and remained based in San Francisco. However, Wells Fargo retains Norwest's pre-1998 stock price history, and all pre-1998 SEC filings are under Norwest, not Wells Fargo.
420 Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94104
