Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf Talks Economy, US Consumer, Earnings

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**Romaine Bostick** (0:07)
I'm here in our New York studio with the CEO of Wells Fargo, Charlie Scharf. Of course, the fourth largest US bank out there, a bank that is now actually growing after roughly, what, six years or so of regulatory constraints. You've been there for more than six years, navigating through those constraints. I think a lot of people have seen the fix that you've done over that time, and now the big question is, what do the next six years look like? Is that a growth story?

**Charlie Scharf** (0:34)
It certainly is for us. I mean, we're incredibly proud of the progress that we've made. We're a very different company than we were when I got to the company. I guess it'll be seven years in November.
And what you've seen since the asset cap has come off is that we're able to compete on a level playing field with everyone, and we're growing our consumer bank, we're growing our commercial bank, we're growing the wealth business, we're growing our core investment bank, and we're doing it in a way which is very, very highly focused on sustainable growth and higher returns. And we think we got a huge opportunity in front of us.

**Romaine Bostick** (1:06)
When you say sustainable growth, some investors want to see aggressive growth. Can you be aggressive and be disciplined and sustainable?

**Charlie Scharf** (1:14)
Listen, in this business, you've got to be very, very careful about what aggressive means. And we also have to be very, very careful about distinguishing between what the markets are adding to our performance or any other financial services provider's performance and what we're doing. We're not looking for quick wins. We're not looking to take outsized risks in the short term to drive stronger results. We're looking at building the underlying franchise, building customer relationships, building flow of things that will go up and down based upon how the markets are doing. But that's what I mean when I say sustainable over a period of time.

**Romaine Bostick** (1:48)
Well, talk about this transition then, because over the past few years, I mean, people will look at what you've done over the last few years and call that a turnaround story. Although we should point out, Wells was in relatively good shape even when that asset cap was placed back in 2018 Was that a turnaround story or was that just kind of regulatory rehab?

**Charlie Scharf** (2:07)
Well, I think, I wouldn't call it, I think you're right. It's not a turnaround story. The company was always very strong. We always had a great franchise, but we had to fix things that needed to get fixed inside the company. But from our customer standpoint, we were serving them every day, we were making loans, we were taking deposits, we were constrained on growth, but we were there providing what we did day in and day out. Financially, we were still doing okay.
When we looked at what we were able to deliver, we're not able to grow our balance sheet. We've been focused a lot on efficiency inside the company. We've been focused a lot on growing our fees inside the business. So our corporate investment bank has grown very nicely, our credit card business and credit card spend is growing very, very nicely, focused on building treasury services. And now we can grow the balance sheet so we can more holistically serve customers. And that's what you see when you look at the results of this past quarter with earnings per share of 25%, revenue growth, double digits, growth across every one of our businesses in terms of revenue.
We're certainly in a different place. And our goal is to be viewed as the best financial services provider in these businesses in the country.

**Romaine Bostick** (3:14)
How much of that is because of Charlie Scharf and the executive team? How much of that is because of market conditions and economic conditions?

**Charlie Scharf** (3:22)
Well, I think it's predominantly because of the quality of the franchise and the broad group of people that work at the company. Listen, what I and the new management team have been able to do is get people focused, create a different set of priorities, but a lot of people execute day in and day out. And the fact is, the markets do help.
So there's no question that, I mean, these times are really good for banks. And so if you're not doing really well as a bank today, there's something not quite right with either how you're executing what your strategy is. And that's not lost on us. But again, we look at the underlying metrics of each business. We're growing our consumer check accounts. We're growing commercial banking customers.