The bank holding company headquartered in San Francisco and founded in 1852 is Wells Fargo.
Henry Wells and William G. Fargo formed Wells Fargo & Company in 1852 to provide express delivery and banking services to California during the gold-rush era. The company transported valuables, including gold, and delivered mail and supplies across the rapidly growing American West.
The modern Wells Fargo & Company has a more complicated corporate lineage than the founding date suggests. In 1998, Norwest Corporation acquired the older Wells Fargo and adopted the Wells Fargo name. That means the present holding company’s legal corporate history includes later mergers, even though its banking brand traces its roots to the 1852 enterprise.
Wells Fargo is one of the United States’ four largest banking groups, alongside JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citigroup. It is commonly confused with Bank of America, which is also a major U.S. bank but has a different corporate history and headquarters. First Interstate and Union Bank were separate institutions that later became part of larger banking combinations.