Wells exec sees bank hiring in Charlotte: One of the company's East Coast leaders expects job cuts here are largely over.

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, which agreed to buy Wachovia amid the financial crisis last fall, has said it has eliminated 548 positions here since the two banks combined last year. But in an interview with the Observer this week, Schulte, one of the bank's highest-ranking executives in Charlotte, worked to dispel the notion there are "any other shoes to fall."

Instead, the bank has hired more than 100 employees at a mortgage processing facility in Fort Mill and in coming months plans to add new business-school graduates in investment banking areas. Looking to beef up staffing in branches, Wells also plans to add about 50 in retail banking in Charlotte over the next year.

"I'm not aware of any big groups of people that haven't already been addressed in the different lines of business," said Schulte, who was previously the head of Wells' western banking unit. "I don't think we're going to see much more, and we're adding in some places."

Wells' purchase of Wachovia was a major blow to the city's pride and remains an ongoing source of angst for employees, customers and community leaders. So far, Wells, now a coast-to-coast competitor with Charlotte's Bank of America, has taken a go-slow approach that will leave Wachovia branches bearing familiar blue-and-green signs until at least late next year.

To be sure, the bank has seen its work force shrink here. Wells says it has about 19,500 employees in the Charlotte area, down from about 21,000 as late as last year. That reduction has included attrition and layoffs in mortgage, investment banking and other areas announced before the merger became official Dec. 31.

Since January, Schulte, 50, has led the Charlotte-based East Coast community banking region that covers 2,800 branches in 14 states from Connecticut to Mississippi. During her 26 years with Wells, the Nebraska native -- who went to high school with one of Warren Buffett's sons -- has worked on many of the bank's big and small mergers in the Midwest and West Coast, but she has never lived on the East Coast.

"I wanted to live here so I could experience Charlotte, so I could be an advocate for it," said Schulte in an interview on the 40th floor of Wachovia's former headquarters tower, where the executive suite is now emblazoned with the Wells Fargo name. "But at Wells Fargo where our headquarters is ... it's really irrelevant because we are very decentralized in our leadership and in our decision-making."

Nine months into combining the company, Schulte said she has established her leadership team, and the company is moving additional employees into their new jobs. The company has "basically guaranteed" positions to everyone who works directly with customers such as tellers and bankers, she said.

In the first two quarters since the merger, Wells Fargo has posted nearly $5billion in profits available to common stockholders, with Wachovia contributing nearly 40 percent of revenue. At an investor conference in New York on Wednesday, chief executive John Stumpf said the merger is on track and expected to be completed in 2011.

The bank has taken $7.3billion of the $41billion in loan losses it projected at the time of the acquisition. It also has reduced risk in Wachovia's $89billion adjustable-rate mortgage portfolio.

Customers have noticed few changes from the merger so far. The first Wachovia branches will change signs in Colorado in November, but they're not likely to switch in the Carolinas until at least late 2010. Computer systems and account names won't convert here until 2011, Schulte said.

"We don't have a definite time frame," said Schulte, who recently settled in a South Charlotte home with her family. "We want to make sure that if we put up a Wells Fargo sign and a Wells Fargo customer wants to do business on the East Coast that they clearly can. We don't want to set up anybody for disappointment."

One change customers will notice sooner is new ATMs that allow deposits to be made without an envelope. The machines sort the checks and make images of them. Atlanta will get the first ones in a couple of weeks. Charlotte will get them in late fall.

Many of the bank's competitors say they have snared business from Wachovia, especially when it was in danger of failing last fall. Schulte acknowledged the bank lost some deposits but not many customers. The bank has a program that has been successful in winning back these deposits, she said.

Another big question is the bank's real estate plans for Charlotte. Duke Energy has taken over naming rights for the tower under construction on South Tryon Street, originally meant to be Wachovia's headquarters. The bank is still assessing its space plans in Charlotte, but it plans to take about 10 floors in the Duke building, she said. Whether the bank will use planned trading floors at the new tower is still being determined.

In her new role, Schulte acknowledges she is more than just a major executive for the bank. She has joined the Charlotte Center City Partners board and is working with a group that is examining the city's drop in charitable giving. She plans to join more boards.

"I think our leaders know that if you can't demonstrate a civic involvement, you're probably not someone who is going to go far in the company," she said.

In Charlotte, some organizations, however, may notice that the bank has been more deliberate lately in how it fills board seats, said Kendall Alley, the bank's Charlotte regional president. The bank wants to match executives with the appropriate boards and spread them around where they're needed, he said.

The Charlotte community will also see regional executives such as Alley taking a bigger role in Wells Fargo than they did at Wachovia, Schulte said. In the bank's decentralized model, many decisions are made at the local level.

And as a sign of how the two banks are getting along in the merger, Schulte noted that she was a student at the University of Nebraska when Alley was a wide receiver on the Clemson football team that beat the Cornhuskers for the 1981 national title.

"If we can get over that," Schulte said, "then Wells Fargo and Wachovia can come together."

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