Wells Fargo hires a D.C., Wall Street insider as its latest vice chair

Kobi Wolf/Bloomberg

The former diplomat and Morgan Stanley executive Thomas Nides is joining Wells Fargo, taking over the megabank's public affairs division as it continues working through a lengthy list of regulatory issues.

Nides, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel under the Biden administration, will be vice chairman at the megabank and oversee its lobbying, communications, community relations and philanthropy. He will report to CEO Charlie Scharf and be part of the bank's operating committee, as well as advise senior management on banking business and other issues.

He will take over the post from another longtime insider in both Washington, D.C., and on Wall Street, Bill Daley, who recently announced his retirement. Prior to joining Wells, Daley had served both as the chief of staff to President Barack Obama and in senior roles at Bank of New York Mellon and JPMorgan Chase.

Nides, who was a top official at the Hillary Clinton-led State Department, spent roughly a decade at Morgan Stanley. He was the investment bank's chief operating officer from 2005 to 2010, according to a biography from the American Academy of Diplomacy, serving on Morgan Stanley's management and operating committees in the run-up to and aftermath of the financial crisis. 

He joined the Obama administration in 2011 as the State Department's chief operating officer. He later returned to Morgan Stanley as vice chairman before President Biden appointed him as the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

His experience in the public and private sectors "will be an important asset to Wells Fargo as we continue to move the company ahead," Scharf said in a news release. 

Scharf was brought in to overhaul Wells Fargo in late 2019 after the company's fake-accounts scandal prompted unprecedented regulatory penalties. That work is continuing today, with the San Francisco-based bank remaining under an asset cap the Federal Reserve imposed more than five-and-a-half years ago. 

"The success of our transformation depends not only on the changes we make inside Wells Fargo, but on how we work with our stakeholders to bring those changes to life," Scharf said in an announcement Friday. "Tom will be instrumental to that work."

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Nides, who will join Wells Fargo next month, said in a statement that he's "excited to join Wells Fargo at this pivotal time in the company's transformation journey."

Nides started his career on Capitol Hill and later became president and CEO of the global public affairs firm Burson-Marsteller. He was also chief administrative officer of Credit Suisse First Boston, the U.S.-based investment banking arm of the now-failed Swiss bank. 

Other past roles include senior vice president of Fannie Mae and chief of staff to the U.S. trade representative.