Wells Fargo Isn’t Closing Branches, Spokesman Says

Contrary to inferences in today’s headlines, Wells Fargo may combine offices but is not planning to close a slew of bank branches to achieve about $1.5 billion in cost savings per quarter by the end of the year, a spokesman for the company tells Barrons.com.

Shares of Wells Fargo(WFC) are up 1.3%, or 40 cents, to $30.49.

Wells Fargo spokesman Ancel Martinez says that a Bloomberg story and an Investors Business Daily mention on today’s comments from the bank’s chief financial officer, Timothy Sloan, mis-characterize the bank’s efforts to reduce non-interest expenses to $11 billion by the end of the year, from $12.5 billion at the end of the fourth quarter.

In fact, when asked if Wells Fargo will consolidate offices, Sloan said,

“We’re looking at all of our locations and trying to make sure or trying to see where we have opportunities to combine offices that may be near each other. That could be a mortgage office with a store. It may be some locations in Wells — but that’s not going to be a big change for our retail business,” according to a transcript of Sloan’s comments, at a conference, provided by Martinez.

Bank of America (BAC) and JPMorgan Chase (JPM) have said they will close branches. Bank of America shares are up 3.3% going into the close, or 26 cents, to $7.97. JPMorgan shares are up 1.7%, or 66 cents, to $39.87.

So how will Wells Fargo cut expenses? Saving while it expands its commercial banking operations. After three years of expenses tied to the integration of Wachovia, Wells Fargo is consolidating lending operations by “streamlining staff and technology functions, and increasing some off-shoring capacities” as it expands internationally, Martinez says.

“We expect to benefit from ongoing cost-savings. We have a lot of management training redundancies. These are staff jobs, and we anticipate we will expand in other areas. In mortgages, with more refinancing, we are hiring in that area.”

Wells Fargo has 6,239 retail banks in the United States, making it the nation’s largest domestic branch network. In addition, Wells Fargo has 725 mortgage offices and 1,375 Wells Fargo Advisors offices for retail brokerage, retirement and other asset management services. On the commercial bank side, for corporate clients, Wells Fargo has 773 offices worldwide.