On the surface, this looks ruthless. But the evidence suggests that the average Crocker manager was just not the same caliber as the average Wells manager and would have failed in the Wells Fargo performance culture. If they weren’t going to make it on the bus in the long term, why let them suffer in the short term? One senior Wells Fargo executive told us: “We all agreed this was an acquisition, not a merger, and there’s no sense beating around the bush, not being straightforward with people. We decided it would be best to simply do it on day one. We planned our efforts so that we could say,
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