Wells Fargo 2008 Annual Report Download - page 7

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“ We’re approaching the merger
of Wells Fargo and Wachovia
not as if we’re building an
empire but as if we’re building
a home — into which we can
welcome our customers so we
can have conversations they
fi nd of value about their hopes
and dreams and fi nancial goals.”
Keeping talent
In this merger, as always in our company, people come fi rst.
A major test of our success in this merger is how much talent
we can keep because the talent of our people is our product.
We’re a service company, and our team members are the
biggest infl uence on our customers. Enthusiastic, loyal, satisfi ed
team members create enthusiastic, loyal, satisfi ed customers
who want to stay with us for a lifetime. That is why we call them
“team members” (an asset in which to invest), not “employees”
(an expense to be managed).
Many people think they have to change companies or careers
every fi ve years to be successful. We’re contrarians — we value
loyalty. We believe that the longer talented team members
stay with us, the more they can use their skill, knowledge and
experience to benefi t our customers. In a merger this big and
complex (it makes us one of America’s top 10-largest private
employers, with 281,000 team members), some positions have
to be eliminated because they’re duplicated or because they
no longer fi t the new structure as we combine businesses and
functions. Inevitably, this causes disruption and uncertainty for
those team members whose positions are eliminated due
to the merger.
Just because a position is eliminated, however, doesn’t
necessarily mean the team member in that position has to leave
the company. To keep as much talent as possible, we’ve paused
in most of our external recruiting and external hiring so we can
help give team members displaced by the merger the chance
to search for other exciting opportunities in our company.
We’re a growth company. We have thousands of open jobs in
our company. We’re adding them every day — in our banks, our
mortgage company, in investments and insurance and many of
our other businesses.
More alike than di erent
The past several months I’ve had the privilege of meeting
and getting to know many thousands of Wachovia team
members in my visits to Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Columbia
(South Carolina), Richmond, Atlanta, Miami, Jacksonville,
Birmingham, Houston, Dallas, Summit (New Jersey),
Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, New York City,
St. Louis, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ve
found them to be just like our Wells Fargo team members
— friendly, caring, sincere, very much committed to their
customers and communities. We’ve had di erent systems,
processes and ways of doing things, but from the customer
point of view I believe we’re much more alike than we’re
di erent. This is one of our great advantages as we integrate
our two companies. Each company began at opposite ends of
the country — Wells Fargo tracing its legacy to 1852, Wachovia
to 1781 — but in the last few months we’ve discovered how much
we have in common and how much we can learn from each
other. We both believe community banking is a noble calling
— the opportunity to help people be fi nancially successful, be
a catalyst for economic growth in our communities and still
earn a fair profi t. By instinct and habit we both begin every
discussion with what’s best for our customers and communities.
We both want every customer to say, “Wow, I didn’t know I
could get service like that. She made a di erence. He solved my
problem and helped me understand how I can achieve my goals.
I learned something new about my fi nancial health.”
We’re very proud of the communities in which we live and
work, and we want our companies to be known as leaders in
making them even better places to live and work. In our Annual
Report this year, beginning on page 10, we introduce you to
13 team members from Wells Fargo and 13 team members
from Wachovia, each working in the same business or similar
geography to satisfy all our customers’ fi nancial needs and help
them succeed fi nancially. These great team members are living
proof: We’re much more alike than we’re di erent.
Our national scope
Our name remains Wells Fargo, our vision and values
remain unchanged, our corporate headquarters remains in
San Francisco, but the talent and resources of our company
are more broadly dispersed across North America than ever
before. Several metro areas across the country have signifi cant
concentrations of businesses, functions and employment
for our company. Des Moines is national headquarters for
Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and global headquarters for
Wells Fargo Financial. Our credit card business has signifi cant
concentrations in Des Moines, Concord (California), Beaverton
(Oregon), and Sioux Falls (South Dakota). Minneapolis-St. Paul
is headquarters for 18 national businesses including Wells Fargo
Insurance (consumer), Institutional Trust, Equipment Finance,
Municipal Finance and SBA Lending. Chicago is our national
headquarters for Wells Fargo Insurance Services (commercial).
Los Angeles is headquarters for 15 national businesses
including U.S. Corporate Banking, Commercial Real Estate
Lending, Community Real Estate Lending, International
Financial Services, Wells Capital Management and Foothill
Capital. Three important centers of employment and expertise
from Wachovia now join this national group of “hubquarters”
for Wells Fargo. Charlotte, North Carolina — Wachovia’s former
corporate headquarters — is now Wells Fargo’s headquarters
for Eastern Community Banking. It’s also home to more than
a dozen of our company’s senior business heads in Wealth