View the San Francisco for Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Proxy materials for Wells Fargo’s annual shareholder meeting, held online Tuesday morning, show the financial services giant’s address as being 420 Montgomery St. in downtown San Francisco. Wells Fargo, meanwhile, is trying to sell that 12-story property, a fact that has heightened speculation the company might one day move its headquarters out of The City, a place where none of the company’s operating-committee members — including CEO and President Charles Scharf — are based.
The bank has repeatedly soft-pedaled the notion that it would exit San Francisco, saying this week that following the sale of its Financial District building, which was built in 1959, its new corporate headquarters will be at nearby 333 Market St., a 33-story tower built in 1981. At the new building, Wells Fargo leases 622,000 square feet, according to data from real-estate information-services provider CoStar. “Wells Fargo’s corporate headquarters remains in San Francisco,” a statement provided by a spokesperson read. “We have been serving S.F. customers since 1852, and the city remains important to the bank.” Wells Fargo in February already shuttered its history museum in the old building, a 409,000 square-foot edifice that is on the same block where Wells Fargo opened for business in San Francisco, when the company offered services that included the stagecoaches that came to symbolize America’s westward expansion. A housing developer has been negotiating to possibly buy the structure for an office-to-residential conversion project. The Wells Fargo corporate headquarters in San Francisco, pictured May 9, 2022, us p for sale as the bank insists The City remains its home. The bank’s leaders will study how its “diverse slate” requirement is being carried out and what needs to change before restarting it in July.Company denials aside, a headquarters move out of San Francisco by a recognizable company is not without precedent. While San Francisco has become a hotbed for technology startups and venture capital, it has lost a number of big corporate offices to other locations, notably that of Bank of America. The giant moved its headquarters to Charlotte, N.C., following itsNumerous other cities have had regional banks absorbed into larger entities following a liberalization of banking rules under President Bill Clinton that allowed banks to more easily buy each other across state lines, said Gerard Cassidy, a banking analyst with RBC Capital Markets. “Many of our iconic regional banks that were located in Philadelphia or Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, were acquired, and their corporate headquarters in those cities were merged into the acquirers’ headquarters outside those cities,” Cassidy said.“When it comes to traditional corporate banking or commercial banking, the whole country has blended together,” Cassidy said. Charles Scharf , Wells Fargo’s chief executive, and other banks’ leaders are sworn in before testifying at a Senate Banking Committee hearing in Washington on Sept. 22, 2022. the nation’s third-largest commercial bank Some 32,000 of the company’s current workers are in North Carolina, while 20,800 employees are in California. Other concentrations of employees include 15,700 in Texas, 10,600 in Minnesota and 6,200 in New York. The number of San Francisco employees was not available. Scharf — previously the chief executive and board chair of Bank of New York Mellon — came on board following a variety of scandals that included the company “pressuring employees to meet unrealistic sales goals” and customers being provided with millions of accounts or products “under false pretenses or without consent, often by creating false records or misusing customers,”. Cassidy said authorities are expected to lift that limit soon, which will put Wells Fargo on a more level playing field with competitors such as Bank of America and JPMorganChase and set the company up for growth.concerning its practices, the sixth such action by regulators this year. In a statement, Scharf said the company’s progress “demonstrates that we have completed much of our common risk and control infrastructure work, including work that is required by other orders.” Three more enforcement actions remain open, one of which relates to the asset-cap penalty, according to a company official. Scharf told investors Tuesday that the company had reduced its headcount from 272,000 in 2019. There have been more than 500 layoffs in San Francisco since late 2020, according to notices filed with the state of California. The largest number came during fiscal 2020-21, and there have been 56 layoffs so far this year. Wells Fargo has also reduced its office footprint in The City dramatically in recent years, as have numerous other companies amid the rise of remote work and layoffs, particularly in the technology sector. CoStar data show Wells Fargo occupied 1.93 million square feet of office space in downtown San Francisco in 2019, while today it occupies 1.06 million square feet. The two largest spaces still occupied are at 333 Market St. and 420 Montgomery St., where it has inhabited 380,000 square feet, the data show. Wells Fargo’s history museum, located around the corner from its corporate headquarters on California Street, closed its doors permanently in February.numerous heavily discounted commercial-property sales The company also shed space at 525 Market St., 635 Sacramento St., 45 Fremont St. and 303 2nd St., according to CoStar.in Irving, a suburb of Dallas, that a spokesperson said will allow the company to bring employees together from the surrounding metropolitan area.Even with Wells Fargo’s executive center of gravity being in New York City, however, Cassidy said the company is still widely thought of as a San Francisco and California firm. Changing its official home to another city would come with costs, and barring some significant financial incentive, management might not find such a move worthwhile, he said. As to the location of senior company leaders, Cassidy said it doesn’t matter — “not in today’s world of global banking.” “In this day and age it doesn’t really matter where a company is formally headquartered,” said Jason Goldberg, a stock analyst and managing director with Barclays, via email. Wells Fargo maintains a “meaningful presence” in San Francisco, as well as in New York City — “the financial capital of the world” — and in Charlotte and Minneapolis, Goldberg wrote.Cassidy said that banks have tended to continue to be involved in the communities where they operate and to contribute philanthropically. In 2023, Wells Fargo donated $17.5 million to Bay Area nonprofits, according to a company spokesperson.to support The City’s Vacant to Vibrant program to help small businesses open in vacant storefronts downtown. And in October, it donatedPiecing together a $15.9 billion budget is always a give and take, and usually features some late-night, behind-closed-doors negotiations in the waning hours before the start of the next fiscal year July 1.The City’s two-year budget deficit stands at a daunting $817 million, according to the latest public estimates, and rectifying it would be a daunting task in any environment. Now, budget analysts in the Mayor’s Office are left to guess what will come from Donald Trump’s presidential administration, be it the indirect economic effects of a Department heads in City Hall have spent months struggling to meet — or, in some cases, fall short of — directions from Lurie and his predecessor to slash spending by at least 15%. What they’ve offered wasn’t enough, apparently, and Nonprofits — some of which have already been dizzied by funding cuts and policy changes undertaken by the federal government — fear theirwill now be slashed. Long iced out by former Mayor London Breed, many organizations credit Lurie for letting them in the door but aren’t convinced their message is resonating. “He’s talking with everyone and even meeting with us, but the numbers will tell us where the priority is,” said Anya Worley-Ziegmann, coordinator for the People’s Budget Coalition, an umbrella that includes more than 150 nonprofits and labor unions.and long-rumored layoffs. But they, too, have no idea what to expect from the mayor’s upcoming budget proposal. In a March 31 press release, union leaders wrote that they see a pathway to avoiding “major cuts.” But they didn’t say cuts were entirely avoidable. Actually, just about anything appears to be on the table, and everyone is adjusting to a new mayor who has pledged fiscal responsibility. San Francisco City Hall pictured from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Barbro Osher Recital Hall on Thursday, April 17, 2025.in an administrative contraction reflective of the agency’s own fiscal pressure. The mayor’s office clearly expects city departments to treat San Francisco’s budget crisis with a similar level of urgency. It was unsatisfied with the level of reductions departments offered under the initial instructions issued former Mayor Breed first issued and that Lurie repeated earlier this year. Last week, Sophia Kittler, the mayor’s budget director, emailed department heads with a stern message. “Unfortunately, reductions proposed by departments to date have been insufficient to close the deficit, and there is no additional time,” Kittler wrote. Departments were told to expect targets for steeper budget reductions. Kittler warned against budgetary sleight-of-hand, such as finding temporary funding for positions or programs outside the general fund. The first is that The City’s fiscal picture hasn’t gotten any better, and departments haven’t done enough in their initial budget proposals to help close an $817 million gap.departments rely more heavily on federal funding. Depending on how much of it comes to fruition, major implications could be in store for San Francisco’s fiscal health. That’s setting aside the tangential effects Trump’s policies could have on the broader economy at a time when“It doesn’t feel like there’s any kind of strategy,” Worley-Ziegmann said. Leaders at the Asian Women’s Shelter, which has operated since 1988, say they fear losses from The City and federal government. Its executive director, Orchid Pusey, revealed at a budget committee hearing last week that the nonprofit had just lost $500,000 dollars in federal funding under the Trump administration, and it expects to lose even more. “I urge you to find a way when it looks like there is none,” Pusey told supervisors. “That is leadership.”Nonprofit advocates and labor unions are expected to call for The City to reduce its reliance on police overtime, which added up to more than $100 million last year. Organized labor is calling on Airbnb to drop a $120 million lawsuit that aims to recover taxes it believes it unfairly paid The City; though labor’s call did get aIf such avenues for relieving fiscal pressure don’t pan out, the question from the mayor’s office will inevitably be this: if you don’t think your services should be cut, from whom do you think we should take? Daniel Adams, head of the Mayor’s Office of Community Development, summed things up bluntly after explaining the department’s planned cuts to the budget committee last week.While it might sometimes seem like Waymo robotaxis are flooding San Francisco’s streets, The City can’t limit their numbers and likely won’t be able to anytime soon. Last year, a bill that would have given California’s bigger cities the right to regulate autonomous vehicles in certain ways, including restricting their numbers,Cortese hasn’t, though, nor have any other legislators. The reason he didn’t reintroduce it was because the entities and organizations that sponsored hislast year, which included the Teamsters and the League of California Cities, declined to sponsor it again this year, he told The Examiner. What’s more, recent efforts by San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan to embrace or accommodate Waymo undermine the argument for local control, he said. “Since the bill was primarily to enable city ordinances, it made no sense to proceed without them,” Cortese said in a text message. “It’s really that simple. If the cities had not begun to acquiesce to the status quo, I’d have been happy to author the bill again.” Lurie spokesman Charles Lutvak did not respond to an emailed request for a response to Cortese’s allegation that the mayor’s actions have undercut the case for local control. A Mahan representative did not immediately respond to a similar request for a response. The California Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Motor Vehicles jointly regulate self-driving cars statewide. Right now, it’s unclear just how many Waymos are on San Francisco’s streets — or on the roads of any other particular California city.and isn’t required to. But San Franciscans and visitors are likely encounter a stream of the company’s cars in the Financial District during the day or in neighborhoods such as Hayes Valley at night. A pair of Waymo self-driving cars driving on Oak Street at Masonic Avenue in San Francisco on Thursday, March 13, 2025. The California Teamsters Public Affairs Council continues to support the idea of local control over autonomous vehicles, said Shane Gusman, its director. As things stand, local officials whom residents trust to keep their streets safe have no say in how many cars Waymo or other autonomous-vehicle operators deploy in their areas, he said.“Our view is that that’s not right. The local officials should have some say in that,” he said. “We still believe in that.” But in this session, the Teamsters decided to focus its autonomous-vehicle legislative efforts on a bill that more closely addresses its members’ concerns, particularly regarding such vehicles’ potential impact on jobs, he said., would require autonomous vehicles that are used in making goods deliveries to residences or businesses to have a human safety operator on board when they travel on highways. The biggest employer of Teamsters members in the state is UPS, and delivery drivers constitute the core of its membership, Gusman said.“But it’s also a safety issue,” he said. Similarly, the League of California Cities continues to support the idea of local control over autonomous vehicles, said Damon Conklin, a legislative advocate for the organization. But its member cities had other priorities for bills they wanted the league to sponsor this year, Conklin said., he said. Among other things, that legislation requires autonomous-vehicle companies to provide a way for emergency responders to quickly communicate with remote human operators when needed and to include in the vehicles an override system that allows first responders to immobilize or move them.Additionally, the governor’s office urged cities to work with the CPUC and DMV to address local concerns and expand the deployment of robotaxis to new areas, Conklin said. Although the league isn’t sponsoring a successor to SB 915, it is sponsoring 15 other bills this session, he said.CPUC and DMV representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment about discussions with local officials about autonomous vehicles. In addition to the Teamsters and the league, SB 915 drew support from the cities of Oakland and Los Angeles, and from San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Mateo counties, all of which passed resolutions in favor of it. Representatives of San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles city and county did not respond to a request for comment about whether their jurisdictions still support local control over robotaxis. A San Mateo County representative, who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak on the record, said the county hadn’t been contacted by Cortese’s office about supporting a new version of SB 915. Regardless of whether those jurisdictions still support the idea of local control, recent actions by Lurie and Mahan undercut the case for it, Cortese said. Over the last two months, Lurie has given Waymo the green light to“Waymo embodies our region’s spirit of innovation — so it’s about time they joined us here in the Capital of Silicon Valley!” he said in a post on X last month.Democratic state Sen. Dave Cortese during a hearing of the Senate Education Committee in Sacramento, Calif., Wednesday, March 30, 2022.Traffic problems associated with such vehicles are likely to get more acute as other autonomous-vehicle developers get state approval to deploy their own robotaxi services, he said. Amazon-owned Zoox, for example, is already“When are another half dozen robotaxi companies approved in their cities ... and they all are competing for fares in congested areas, like airport arrivals, who will the turn to to manage that?” Cortese said in a text.Waymo spokesman Ethan Teicher declined to comment on whether the company supports state or local officials having the power to set a cap on the number of autonomous vehicles on the road. The company does keep congestion in mind in operating its cars, he said in an emailed statement. “With centralized dispatching, we have control over where, when, and how our fleet operates — including how many vehicles are on the road — and we use that capability to reduce our footprint on congestion and ensure our vehicles are highly-utilized,” Teicher said. Representatives of the AV Industry Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment about steps the industry is taking to address traffic effects of robotaxi deployments or whether the association supports government-set caps on the number of autonomous vehicles to limit congestion. At this point, it’s too late to introduce a bill that would give cities local control that could be passed and take effect by the beginning of next year, Cortese said. The soonest that could happen is next year’s session for a law that would come into effect in early 2027, he said. “I suspect there will be lots of robotaxis fighting for key locations for fares by that time,” Cortese said. “Only DMV can regulate them per current state law,” he said. “Good luck with that oversight on local streets, schools and airports.”Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely!Create a password that only you will remember. 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