Wells Fargo says it plans more job cuts a day after Truist disclosed major layoffs plan

A top Wells Fargo official said to expect more layoffs at the bank and a decrease in office space as the bank looks to continue to reduce expenses.

The comments by Chief Financial Officer Michael Santomassimo at a Barclays Global Financial Services Conference on Tuesday came a day after Charlotte-based Truist said at the same meeting it is planning $750 million in “sizable” layoffs and other cuts to reduce expenses.

Wells Fargo is based in San Francisco but has its largest employment hub in Charlotte, with about 27,000 workers here and more than 247,000 worldwide.

“We continue to believe we’ve got a lot more to do to make the company as efficient as it should be,” Santomassimo said at the conference.

He did not detail the extent of the coming layoffs.

Santomassimo said employee totals have decreased every quarter since the third quarter of 2020. “Now I’m not suggesting it’s going to be down every quarter forever, right. But I do think that there’s more to do,” he said.

Where will Wells Fargo job cuts come from?

There is no one specific business line that will be the focus of the layoffs, according to Santomassimo.

“It really just is business by business, group by group,” he said, “making sure we come in every day, every quarter and have a plan to continue to incrementally get better and better.”

Santomassimo also said that attrition rates at the bank have slowed noticeably since last fall. “And so that’s why you see us having to use severance more than what we’ve had to do over the last couple of years,” he said.

Wells Fargo has reduced its employee totals by about 40,000 people over the past couple years, Santomassimo said.

Wells Fargo office space

Shrinking its real estate portfolio also will help the bank cut expenses.

“We had too much real estate before COVID,” Santomassimo said. “And so we’ve been methodically sort of working through that portfolio over the last few years, and we still have more to do there.”

Office workers working from home since the pandemic has had a major impact on commercial real estate. In Charlotte, for instance, a Charlotte Observer analysis in June found that 1 in 5 uptown office floors is vacant now amid record high vacancy rates.

There is “systematic stress” in the office space portfolio, Santomassimo said. “I personally spent a lot of time going through property by property about where we are, how are we managing it, what are the risks, how are we getting ahead of it.”

Wells Fargo stunned the Charlotte office market in January when it said it would be moving all workers from two of its uptown Charlotte towers. That includes leaving its iconic longtime home at 301 South College St., the site of its 1980s-era building that resembles a jukebox.

Then in April, the bank detailed plans for a $500 million upgrade at its largest local campus, in northeast Charlotte.

This story was originally published September 13, 2023, 8:52 AM.