If not, why? All of our peers have meaningful businesses in other economic and asset centers outside of the US. Why are we so behind? Or does the management actually have a philosophical belief or worldview that the rest of the world will fall apart and it’s only the United States worth keep investing in? Or is just a result of our management being lazy?
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All of CIB was from Wachovia. WFC had nothing and they kind of destroyed it.
Wells Fargo rolled back a lot of Wachovia’s international CIB locations following the merger. Wachovia CIB was on every continent but Antarctica. I don’t know what we have now as I’ve moved on from a role that would know.
Yes and no. When Charlie conducted his first set of Town Halls, he was asked this question or some variation. He explained we are a US bank, have a strong (my words) brand here (even though it was to be erased/sanitized) and he had no desire to expand. However, there are several niche teams in Asia, Australia, the UK and Canada. Think affluent and legal. With the asset cap, our competitors are growing into the trillions and leaving us in the dust while we hire third world people to run ops and now (the audacity!) risk teams so it’s clear to me we’re going backwards instead of growing into a world class company.
I know WFAM has businesses outside of the states, but that biz is long gone...