Bank of the Year: How Wells Fargo conquered America

With any senior executive from Wells Fargo, it seems, you have to start with the history lesson. That’s certainly the case with the bank’s chairman and chief executive, John Stumpf. On first meeting, he tells how Mr Wells and Mr Fargo opened their first branch in 1852, with a stagecoach business that remains the logo of the bank to this day.

Then you get the vision and values bit. How Wells does not have branches; it has stores (in fact at 9,000 distribution points it has considerably more than any other bank in the US).