Wells Fargo & Company Authorizes Buyback of 50 Million Common Shares

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Wells Fargo & Company's(NYSE: WFC) Board of Directors today authorized the Company to acquire,from time to time, an additional 50 million shares of the Company's commonstock. The Company may use shares acquired under this authorization toissue common stock for benefit plans, conversion of convertible securities,other corporate purposes, and to cover a similar amount of shares to beissued to complete Wells Fargo's acquisition of Greater Bay Bancorp,expected by the end of this year. Wells Fargo and Greater Bay signed adefinitive agreement May 4th for Wells Fargo to acquire Greater Bay, basedin East Palo Alto, Calif., in a stock-for-stock merger. Wells Fargo hasapproximately 3.4 billion shares outstanding. Wells Fargo & Company is a diversified financial services company with$540 billion in assets, providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgageand consumer finance through almost 6,000 stores and the internet(wellsfargo.com) across North America and internationally. Wells FargoBank, N.A. is the only bank in the U.S., and one of only two banksworldwide, to have the highest credit rating from both Moody's InvestorsService, "Aaa," and Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, "AAA."