Diane Schumaker-Krieg
Managing Director, Global Head of Research, Economics & Strategy, Wells Fargo Securities
It's not often that a Wall Street research firm turns to the CIA, but Diane Schumaker-Krieg is always intent on finding an edge.
Last year she enlisted former CIA and FBI behavioral consultants to help her team sort out and interpret the body language and other nonverbal cues from executives at the public companies Wells Fargo covers.
It might have been overkill, considering Wells' already strong track record. But in a challenging year that saw many competitors struggle with ongoing declines in equity commissions-leading to layoffs and mergers in the field-innovation has helped Wells maintain its standing as a top stock picker, high-grade bond researcher and earnings forecaster, while its economics team has won accolades from Bloomberg, MSNBC and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
In the past year, Schumaker-Krieg's team published in excess of 20,000 reports, and drew 1,000 corporate clients and 5,000 institutional investors to its conferences. The research unit has expanded its role as an enterprise "think tank" for the bank. The energy research team, for example, has explored the natural gas boom (including the impact of fracking) for Wells Fargo. And Schumaker-Krieg has an expanded role of her own, having added credit and FX strategy to her responsibilities in the second half of 2012.
