Wells Fargo Financial Breaks Ground on New Building For its Expanding Headquarters Complex

 

Des Moines, Iowa – Oct. 6, 2004 – Wells Fargo Financial, the consumer finance subsidiary of Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC), broke ground today in downtown Des Moines on a nine-story, 360,000-square-foot addition to the company’s home office complex. When completed in 2006, the building will house up to 1,500 team members.

The new building will be directly across the street from the company’s existing headquarters at 800 Walnut St., where a 370,000-square-foot expansion building opened two years ago. Wells Fargo Financial also has agreed to lease space in the new building to the Federal Home Loan Bank, whose offices are just west of the construction site.

When the building is completed, Wells Fargo Financial will own approximately 1 million square feet of office space in downtown Des Moines. The company has been downtown since it was founded in 1897 at 3rd and Walnut streets.

"Today’s event is yet another visible reminder of Wells Fargo’s expansion in the Des Moines metropolitan area and of our commitment to bringing more jobs to central Iowa," said Tom Shippee, Wells Fargo Financial president and CEO. "This building is an addition to the home office complex of a business that serves customers throughout North America, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands. Our home office in Des Moines is an integral piece of our company’s growth."

The design architect firm on the project is Pickard Chilton of New Haven, Conn. Jon Pickard, design principal, grew up in Des Moines and attended Roosevelt High School before earning a degree in architecture from Iowa State University and a master’s in architecture from Yale University. William Chilton, Pickard’s partner, also has an architecture degree from Iowa State. Serving as executive architect on the project will be the Des Moines firm Herbert Lewis Kruse Blunck. The general contractor is Mortenson of Minneapolis.

Wells Fargo’s expanding presence in central Iowa has been evident for several years. In 2001, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage moved into a new 400,000-square-foot headquarters building in West Des Moines where more than 1,700 employees work. In June, the company broke ground on a 960,000-square-foot office campus in West Des Moines that will house 2,300 Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and Consumer Credit Group employees who currently work in 11 other locations in the Des Moines metropolitan area. Over the long term, as Wells Fargo continues to hire additional team members, the campus could accommodate up to 4,500 workers.

Wells Fargo has committed to hiring 2,000 additional team members in metropolitan Des Moines during a four-year period that began in the summer of 2003.

"Iowa has been good for us, and we’ve been good for Iowa," said Mark Oman, executive vice president of Wells Fargo’s Home and Consumer Finance Group, which includes Des Moines-based Wells Fargo Financial and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, as well as Wells Fargo’s Consumer Credit Group and Corporate Trust Services.

"We’re not just putting up new buildings, but rather we’re investing in this state and generating economic development," Oman said. "Our expansion projects in West Des Moines and downtown Des Moines are not about buildings, they are about jobs. As our business continues to grow and our customer base expands, our servicing operations are expanding as well." Including all the business units within Wells Fargo & Company, there are more than 10,000 team members in Iowa.

Wells Fargo Financial, a unit of Wells Fargo & Company, is a $31 billion company providing consumer installment and home equity lending, automobile financing, consumer and private-label credit cards and commercial services to consumers and businesses. The company has approximately 17,700 team members and operates in 48 U.S. states, the 10 provinces of Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and the Pacific Islands. It is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. More information about Wells Fargo Financial is available at .

Wells Fargo & Company is a diversified financial services company with $420 billion in assets, providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage and consumer finance to more than 23 million customers from more than 6,000 stores and the Internet (wellsfargo.com) across North America and elsewhere internationally. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. is the only "Aaa"- rated bank in the United States. Visit Wells Fargo at .