Five questions with Wells Fargo Bank CEO

Bakersfield Californian ^ | Wednesday April 27th, 2005 | No Author listed

[stylin_geek]

A leader in America's financial services industry stopped by Bakersfield Wednesday.

KW Associates, Realtors Richard Kovacevich, chairman and chief executive officer of Wells Fargo & Co. in San Francisco, addressed graduate students in the School of Business and Public Administration at Cal State Bakersfield, professors and local business leaders. His appearance was part of the school's Executive Briefing series, in which prominent professionals speak at the school.

In case you're wondering, Kovacevich is not related to the local farming family with the same last name.

Before Kovacevich stepped to the podium in the CSUB lecture hall, he sat down with Californian staff writer Erin Waldner. The following are excerpts from the interview.

1In the United States, what are some of the banking trends that you see today?

"First of all, banking today is in terrific shape. The economy has been good, unemployment is relatively low, the cash flows from businesses is terrific, productivity is up. Everything is going really well. The competitive environment is really tough ... Therefore, there's a lot of competition out there to continue to grow. And there continues to be a lot of technological (changes). The Internet, of course, is one of the big changes today."

(Wells Fargo was the first bank in the country to introduce online banking. Ten years later, Kovacevich said more and more consumers want to do their banking online.)

[stylin_geek]

I found the part about the economy interesting. However, I think the CEO was incorrect when he said there were 8,000 network intrusion attempts detected per month. I would guess Wells Fargo gets hit closer to 8,000 times per day.

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