BankTown Banking & Finance News

[KJHburg]

40 minutes ago, TCLT said:

I don't remember seeing anyone suggest this building could be renovated for affordable housing. In fact I'm pretty sure CLTDevelopment said it couldn't be because of the ceiling heights. Also any developer willing to pay top dollar for the land would've wanted to bulldoze the building anyway so the city would've been leaving money on the table by requiring the building be saved. Pretty sure this was an either or situation if you wanted affordable housing created in uptown.

could have been a hotel and I know several hotels were interested but Inlivian would not sell it.  Most cities have multiple hotels in restored buildings we have one the Dunhill.  Nashville has them all over their downtown historical buildings turned into hotel.  Dittos modern you can build anything Houston.  Multiple hotels downtown in older buildings.  

Not an either or situation they owned the lot behind it and they could sold the hotel and built their apartment building on the vacant parking lot a part of that property and still built more units.  Plus the county owns the next 2 blocks and there is ample room there on the old Hal Marshall center site for many hundreds of units of affordable housing. 

[videtur quam contuor]

The Addison, a building from a comparable era, at the corner of Morehead and McDowell was renovated ~20 years ago from residential to office and ceiling height was an issue but the location of the building and quality of renovation allowed the success of the project. New communications, lighting, fire suppression and other systems in the ceiling space lower the effective height but tenants at Addison are satisfied with their space.

[CLT2014]

Truist is opening their new Innovation and Technology Center in the former BofA Trading Floor this month. 100,000 square feet of research and collaboration space including an indoor park-like common space. The center will also have an Innovators in Residence program, with Verizon, Amazon Web Services, and Unqork as founding partners. 

Truist's online and mobile experience ranked last in the JD Power Survey of large banks -> may be partially influenced by people hating change and missing their old BB&T and SunTrust apps. 

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/banking/article262725197.html

[SydneycartonII]

[CharlotteWkndBuzz]

Speaking of Truist, I find it funny that the OG BB&T HQ in Winston hasn’t even updated their signage yet. Taking their time lol. The company was quick to change signage everywhere else though. 

[CLT2014]

40 minutes ago, CharlotteWkndBuzz said:

Speaking of Truist, I find it funny that the OG BB&T HQ in Winston hasn’t even updated their signage yet. Taking their time lol. The company was quick to change signage everywhere else though. 

Truist moved out of the building in downtown and relocated office workers to their other office locations around Winston + WFH. The entire building, other than ground floor branch, is now vacant. 

Edited June 22, 2022 by CLT2014

[CharlotteWkndBuzz]

49 minutes ago, CLT2014 said:

Truist moved out of the building in downtown and relocated office workers to their other office locations around Winston + WFH. The entire building, other than ground floor branch, is now vacant. 

Wow, didn’t realize that. That explains it lol. Hate that for the tower though. Used to be one of the staple towers downtown before Wachovia (Wells Fargo) was built. Hopefully they can attract another tenant. 

[JRCLT]

Now this may sound dumb but I just now realized why the “DEC” now really the Wells Fargo Center has been lit up gold and red. That’s the key thing here I never put together until I randomly looked at it today and thought, “huh. I wonder why it’s that color so consistently lately-“ and instantaneously it clicked lol. Gold and Red for Wells Fargo. *Bonk* Felt like sharing my moment of stupidity today.



Hopefully they don’t read this and put a big sign up there to make it more obvious!

[KJHburg]

If Wells moved its HQ here I would not even care if they put a huge stagecoach atop their building the now renamed Wells Fargo Center orginal name when it started was the Wachovia Corporate Center.  

[Zeitgeist_4131]

10 hours ago, KJHburg said:

If Wells moved its HQ here I would not even care if they put a huge stagecoach atop their building the now renamed Wells Fargo Center orginal name when it started was the Wachovia Corporate Center.  

Word is new leadership hates the stagecoach logo...it's definitely being de-emphasized in branding.

10 hours ago, JeanClt said:

Now this may sound dumb but I just now realized why the “DEC” now really the Wells Fargo Center has been lit up gold and red. That’s the key thing here I never put together until I randomly looked at it today and thought, “huh. I wonder why it’s that color so consistently lately-“ and instantaneously it clicked lol. Gold and Red for Wells Fargo. *Bonk* Felt like sharing my moment of stupidity today.



Hopefully they don’t read this and put a big sign up there to make it more obvious!

It's been pretty consistently red and gold in the very early, pre-dawn morning for years (even before Duke chose to leave). I've seen it often on early morning bike commutes to downtown.

[J-Rob]

10 hours ago, KJHburg said:

If Wells moved its HQ here I would not even care if they put a huge stagecoach atop their building the now renamed Wells Fargo Center orginal name when it started was the Wachovia Corporate Center.  

But, aren't they moving the HQ to Texas?

8 minutes ago, Zeitgeist_4131 said:

Word is new leadership hates the stagecoach logo...it's definitely being de-emphasized in branding.

The stagecoach doesn't exactly project industry-leading innovation or forward-thinking progress. If anything, it is more of a reminder of the era of scandals. 

[DMann]

From the SF Biz Journal:

 

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2022/06/23/wells-fargo-renews-market-street-lease.html

 

 

 

[SydneycartonII]

1 hour ago, DMann said:

From the SF Biz Journal:

 

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2022/06/23/wells-fargo-renews-market-street-lease.html

 

 

 

How many square feet does that lease entail?  The building looks tiny.

[Matthew.Brendan]

from Wiki:

Quote

333 Market Street is a class-A office skyscraper on Market Street between Fremont and Beale in the Financial District of San Francisco, California. The 144 m (472 ft), 33-story tower was designed by Gin Wong Associates, and completed in 1979.

 

[CLT2014]

Wells Fargo's defacto headquarters is already New York City. Wells is run by JP Morgan Chase alumni now with strong connections to NY (which isn't necessarily a bad thing).  They know the JP Morgan geography model where you have large operations of middle class jobs in places like Texas and Ohio, but they don't move C-Suite leadership there. Once the only Charlotte based leaders left, Mary Mack and Derek Flowers retire, I'm sure those positions will be based in New York too or completely re-organized. Hilani Kerr who currently reports to Mary Mack as EVP of Consumer Strategy & Innovation is based in New York City and a likely successor to replace Mack. Thus the only logical thing to do if they decide to file the paperwork with the SEC  to move the "Principal office," is to move it from San Francisco to New York. Texas, North Carolina, Minnesota, et.... NONE of them are going to become HQ when 75% of the management team is based in New York City. 

The media will have a field day (and WF knows this) if they pick a location like Charlotte or Texas: "Wells Fargo announces the location of their headquarters will shift from San Francisco to Charlotte, except none of the C-Suite is actually going to relocate to Charlotte and they will all remain in New York at the defacto HQ where the actual decisions are made about the future of Wells Fargo. The shift from San Francisco to Charlotte is thus a paper shift from one city where none of the senior leaders are, to a different city where only 2 of 18 executives are based. The troubled bank recovering from scandal will thus continue to have their leadership team located in a different city than the headquarters. When asked to comment on the HQ shift, CEO Charles Scharf said "Charlotte is our largest concentration of employees, so it made sense to name it as our headquarters. It is a nice place to live, but myself and none of the NY-based management team plan to move there because we don't want to. We'll continue to be in New York and visit Charlotte once or twice a year. Mary Mack and Derek Flowers will continue to travel to see me in New York because it makes more sense for two people to fly to NY versus  13 to Charlotte."

Headline that makes more sense and is a non-event: "Wells Fargo announces their headquarters is now New York City where 75% of the executive team is based. They will continue to maintain a significant presence in the San Francisco Bay Area and are not doing layoffs of Bay Area employees." This opens the door to just backfilling Bay Area positions in other cities (which is already being done) over time based on attrition. Non-major news story. Controversy of the HQ being in a city where leadership doesn't live is over.

Leadership team:
New York
Charles Scharf, CEO
Michael Santomassimo, CFO
Bei Ling, HR Head
Lester Owens: Head of Ops:
Ellen Patterson: General Counsel
Scott Powell: Chief Operating Officer
Paul Ricci, Chief Auditor
Kleber Santos, Head of Diversity & Inclusion
Barry Sommers, CEO of Wealth Management
Saul Van Beurden, Head of Technology
Michael Weinbach, CEO of Consumer Lending
Jonathan Weiss, CEO of Corporate & Investment Banking
Ather WIlliams, Head of Strategy, Digital, Innovation

Charlotte
Derek Flowers: Chief Risk Officer: Charlotte
Mary Mack, CEO Consumer & Small Business: Charlotte

Other
William Daley, VIce Chari Public Affairs: Chicago
Muneera Carr, Chief Accounting Officer: Dallas
Kyle Hranicky, CEO Commerical Banking: Houston

Edited June 24, 2022 by CLT2014

[SydneycartonII]

I’m not sure what will happen, but Wells is looking for another 1m S.F. of space in addition to the 500k that it leased in a new building in the Hudson Yards.

Hopefully, Wells will build another tower here too.   Is Wells one of the rumored tenants for Riverside’s Midnight Diner site?

 

Edited June 25, 2022 by SydneycartonII

[Desert Power]

On 6/24/2022 at 4:04 PM, CLT2014 said:

New York

 

Charles Scharf, CEO
Michael Santomassimo, CFO
Bei Ling, HR Head
Lester Owens: Head of Ops:
Ellen Patterson: General Counsel
Scott Powell: Chief Operating Officer
Paul Ricci, Chief Auditor
Kleber Santos, Head of Diversity & Inclusion
Barry Sommers, CEO of Wealth Management
Saul Van Beurden, Head of Technology
Michael Weinbach, CEO of Consumer Lending
Jonathan Weiss, CEO of Corporate & Investment Banking
Ather WIlliams, Head of Strategy, Digital, Innovation

Charlotte
Derek Flowers: Chief Risk Officer: Charlotte
Mary Mack, CEO Consumer & Small Business: Charlotte

Other
William Daley, VIce Chari Public Affairs: Chicago
Muneera Carr, Chief Accounting Officer: Dallas
Kyle Hranicky, CEO Commerical Banking: Houston

I still think it is a flawed strategy, when you need to change the culture, to have these leaders sitting in a different city like this.

On 6/24/2022 at 8:20 AM, Zeitgeist_4131 said:

Word is new leadership hates the stagecoach logo...it's definitely being de-emphasized in branding.

They should worry less about the branding of a stagecoach and focus more on having the company operate less like one.

[JRCLT]

Is that why they took the stagecoach to NY? To de-emphasize that branding?

I mean that as in it’s in NY where most executives are.

[Matthew.Brendan]

Is it not a historical relic? They gonna toss it in the dumpster?

They had a dozen+ "museum" locations pre-covid, now all shuttered save for SF.

[Zeitgeist_4131]

1 hour ago, JeanClt said:

Is that why they took the stagecoach to NY? To de-emphasize that branding?

I mean that as in it’s in NY where most executives are.

Watch what’s not going to go into the branding. Something will not be seen as much….even the new stylized stagecoach which replaced the John Rush version after 2019 isn’t significant in external branding. To Matthew.B’s point above, all the museum’s except the one in San Fran is closed. You won’t be seeing the stagecoach in parades. It’s no longer on the app icon or represented notably on the website. Not on new credit cards.  Definitely being de-emphasized.

[JRCLT]

Watch what’s not going to go into the branding. Something will not be seen as much….even the new stylized stagecoach which replaced the John Rush version after 2019 isn’t significant in external branding. To Matthew.B’s point above, all the museum’s except the one in San Fran is closed. You won’t be seeing the stagecoach in parades. It’s no longer on the app icon or represented notably on the website. Not on new credit cards.  Definitely being de-emphasized.

I wasn’t being literal lol. The question was rhetorical just to emphasize the irony of bringing the stagecoach from Charlotte to where the executives are when they themselves are removing it from branding as you mentioned (or so someone mentioned in this thread about the move).

If it went to San Francisco where the last museum is or stayed in Charlotte that would have made a little more sense? But to NY? Seems Ironic to bring it there is what I was expressing.

[SydneycartonII]

I was unaware  that they had one of these in NY until I read this thread.
 

https://www.spottedbylocals.com/newyork/wells-fargo-ny-office/?cn-reloaded=1

Wells Fargo NY Office – A real stagecoach!

Last checked: May 25th, 2022 | By: Geoffrey Dunbar

In the 1956 Harrison & Abramovitz designed Socony-Mobil Building on East 42nd Street (just east of Madison) — formerly the only centrally air-conditioned building in the world and the first to be clad entirely in pleated stainless steel panels (and still the largest of that type in the world) — resides the disgraced Wells Fargo Bank company.

Disgraced, because for more than a decade, until 2015, in order to boost the bank’s stock price, Wells Fargo’s top executives pressured low-level employees to secretly create more than two million unauthorized and false checking and credit-card accounts. Tried. Guilty. Fined 180 Million dollars.

Disgraced a second time because of ‘fraudulent’ loans and sales. Tried. Guilty again (2020). Fined 3 Billiondollars.

A truly unruly, wild west barroom type of scofflaw, Wells Fargo appears to be.

Anyway, in the lobby of this super New York skyscraper is, appropriately, a Wells Fargo stagecoach — an original, the real thing — in blood red livery with olive green velvet/velour upholstery, minus the dust and the four horses that pulled it, and the driver and shotgun armed escort — Wyatt Earp was a Wells Fargo rider and maybe escorted this very coach….

 

Edited June 27, 2022 by SydneycartonII

[SydneycartonII]

Even though Wells closed the museum in Charlotte, is there still a stage coach in Uptown?  I never noticed one way or the other when I’m in Uptown.

[Zeitgeist_4131]

1 hour ago, SydneycartonII said:

Even though Wells closed the museum in Charlotte, is there still a stage coach in Uptown?  I never noticed one way or the other when I’m in Uptown.

No.

[KJHburg]

was up at my Wework office in the Regions and was asking some questions.  Seems MUFG is still a full floor tenant in this location and Citibank has taken over a floor and some corner offices on another floor.  Both of these would be in the market for home in the future I would think.  

Hmmm 91 jobs posted for Citi within 25 miles of CLT but not any branch level jobs  most cross posted in other cities as well but very interesting.   Listing of jobs for Citi are very interesting.