Wells Fargo to Sell Longtime Headquarters in San Francisco

Wells Fargo, with roots dating back to Old West stagecoaches laden with gold, may be drifting East.

The San Francisco-based bank is poised to put its headquarters at 420 Montgomery Street up for sale, while shutting down its last history museum after its C-suite decamped to New York, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified sources.

The sale of the 409,000-square-foot building in the Financial District would mark a yearslong shift by Wells Fargo away from San Francisco, with its senior executives now largely based in New York or Charlotte, N.C. The building stands where the bank was founded in 1852.

The bank is in talks with potential buyers. Wells Fargo has hired Eastdil Secured, an advisor it sold in 2019 but in which it still owns a minority stake, to market the building.

Wells Fargo will move its official hub to 333 Market Street, where the firm two years ago renewed its lease for 622,300 square feet through 2032.

An unidentified spokeswoman for Wells Fargo said the bank continually assesses its real-estate portfolio to manage costs and respond to economic and consumer trends. She said Wells has done business in San Francisco since the 1850s and that “the city remains important to the bank.”

Once a key hub of the bank, the San Francisco office once housed top executives and the last of its dozen corporate history museums. The museum is expected to close as soon as early next year.

Wells Fargo has 23,000 employees in California, about 10 percent of its workforce. It has slowly trimmed its real estate footprint in San Francisco.

In April 2022, the bank moved out of a 34-story skyscraper at 45 Fremont Street in the Financial District, where it had occupied 146,500 square feet for two decades.

Last year, the company sold a 13-story, 355,000-square-foot tower at 550 California Street for $40.5 million, aiming to save money by shrinking its real estate footprint by 7 percent.

Wells Fargo has beefed up its presence in New York under CEO Charlie Scharf, who is based there and has sought to build out its investment bank, according to the WSJ. Late last year, Wells Fargo announced plans to expand its footprint in New York’s Hudson Yards.

The bank also has a significant presence in Charlotte, which has been home to its largest employee base since it bought Wachovia in 2008.

Once the biggest player in the commercial and multifamily mortgage servicer industry, Wells Fargo in August sold most of its commercial mortgage servicing business to Atlanta-based Trimont for an undisclosed price. The buyer took over $475 billion in loans.

— Dana Bartholomew