Wells Fargo plans to sell its asset management business to two private equity firms, part of CEO Charles Scharf’s efforts to dump non-essential operations and help the bank emerge from years of scandals.
GTCR and Reverence Capital Partners agreed to buy Wells Fargo Asset Management for $2.1 billion, according to a statement Tuesday. The unit has $603 billion of assets under management and employs more than 450 investment professionals.
Scharf, who took the reins in late 2019, has conducted deep reviews of Wells Fargo’s businesses, and said earlier this year that divestitures would help improve the company’s focus. He listed asset management, corporate trust and rail leasing as units on the chopping block.
“This transaction reflects Wells Fargo’s strategy to focus on businesses that serve our core consumer and corporate clients, and will allow us to focus even more on growing our wealth and brokerage businesses,” Barry Sommers, CEO of Wells Fargo’s wealth and investment-management division, said in the statement.
Wells Fargo has been struggling under an asset cap imposed by the Fed in 2018 to punish the lender for a series of lapses in governance and risk management. In one of the first signs of success in the drive to escape the penalty, the company secured the Fed’s acceptance of a proposal it submitted in September to overhaul operations.
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The firm has about 200,000 staffers doing their jobs from home, a spokesman said.
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The unit could fetch more than $3 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
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Alterations include higher hurdles for cash pay, a grid stretch for deferred compensation and new bonuses.
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Among its other moves toward simplification, the bank agreed in December to divest its $10 billion private student-loan book to a group including Apollo Global Management and Blackstone.
Not everything is for sale. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo decided to keep its private-label credit-card unit after reaching out to potential buyers last year, a person with knowledge of the matter said earlier this month.
The asset management deal, which is expected to be completed in the second half of 2021, will leave Wells Fargo with a 9.9% equity interest in the operation. Nico Marais, who has led Wells Fargo Asset Management since 2019, will continue to oversee the business, according to the statement.
Shares of Wells Fargo, which have climbed 24% this year, advanced 0.4% to $37.40 at 9:32 a.m. in New York.
Asset management has seen a wave of consolidation in recent years, with big banks either bulking up their divisions in search of efficiencies or selling them to rivals eager to grow. The sector is responding to a squeeze on fees from cutthroat competition and a shift toward passive fund management, as well as high technology and compliance costs.
Among major U.S. banks, Wells Fargo is a midsize player in asset management. Morgan Stanley agreed last year to buy Eaton Vance for $7 billion, making it one of the firms with $1 trillion or more of assets under management, alongside JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs. Citigroup and Bank of America don’t have a major presence in the business.
— Additional reporting by Tom Metcalf
