(Bloomberg News) Wells Fargo & Co., the fourth-biggest U.S. bank by assets, shuffled regional managers and broadened oversight as part of an effort to streamline the wealth-management unit.
The lender cut its regional managers from 12 to seven, Vince Scanlon, a bank spokesman, said in a May 6 e-mailed statement. John Dowd will add oversight of Pennsylvania and Delaware to his role managing the Northeast region and John Duchala, who had overseen the two states, will lead the Southwest, Scanlon said. Jeff Hartman adds Washington, Virginia and Maryland to his management of the Carolinas, as Greg Bronstein moves to head the Southeast region, Scanlon said.
Wells Fargo is fine-tuning businesses that Chief Executive Officer John Stumpf, 57, called "sub-optimized" in December. Wealth management is one of three units, along with brokerage and retirement, bolstered by the purchase of Wachovia Corp. and overseen by David Carroll. The segment represents a "big opportunity," Timothy J. Sloan, the finance chief, said in May.
"As many companies do from time to time, Wells Fargo wealth management has recently made a number of changes to its internal structure," Scanlon said in a separate e-mailed statement. "This new organizational structure, which takes us from 12 to seven regions, will allow us to realize the efficiencies of the merger with Wachovia."
$390 Billion
Joe DeFur leads California and Hawaii, while Jeff Grubb supervises the Mountain Northwest and Tim Traudt manages the Great Lakes region, Scanlon said. The division held $390 billion in client assets on Dec. 31, Scanlon said.
Kim Radford and Bill D'Antignac, named in an April 2009 statement as two of six managers for the East Coast, weren't mentioned in Scanlon's announcement. Radford oversaw the Southeast, while D'Antignac ran Florida, according to the statement.
First-quarter profit at the wealth, brokerage and retirement segment climbed 20 percent from a year earlier to $339 million, on revenue of $3.2 billion, the company said in a quarterly regulatory filing.